POETRY'S REAL ESSENCE: A REFLECTION

Sara González

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 4

Noviembre de 2003

Solitude, the most faithful friend of my silence,

the cruelest enemy of my failures,

the deepest echo of my memories…

There is no answer but solitude itself.

There is no need to write about love tomake poetry; 

there is no reason to believe that life is not poetry.

Poetry is the voice of our souls, the voice of our desires, 

and the voice of our experiences.

Every single day of a human being is full of poetry, 

every moment, every decision, and every situation.

It does not matter what position a person has in this world, 

as long as he or she can identify the essence,  

his or her own essence, the poetry's essence.

Solitude and Love,

Darkness and Brightness,

Sadness and Happiness,

Displeasure and Pleasure; all these are contradictions that can also be poetry.

Not all has to be right, there is a need to be wrong;

but there is a stronger need to join these two opposite forces to understand that life is a constant fight between two powers.

In my case between me and myself.

As William Blake said without contraries there is no progression (1).

There are feelings in this world that are difficult to understand;

there are wars, conflicts and there is injustice,

but it is in these awful words

where our beautiful poetry finds its real essence,

it is here where poetry begins to carry out its mission.

The existence of these words and these contradictions allows poetry to transcend time and to make worlds over, my own world and the other's world. That is why poetry exists, to prepare hearts, minds and souls for the coming days, for the future. To remind human beings why we are here and why we were put in this land of contradiction. Poetry gives people a sensitive view of the cruelest things in life and helps people to understand why one day they are happy and the next one they are covered with sadness.

It sounds ironic but the worst things of this world are the most wonderful when poetry keeps in contact with them. So poetry has a mission and it is in our hands to receive it or just to let it go, or even worst, to let it get lose in time…

1 . Blake, William. The Prophetic Books: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (Prose work written from 1790 to 1793)