The disarming ease of English Poetry

English poetry has no entry barrier. Anyone from 4th grade onwards, with a working knowledge of English can write poetry. The school magazines are filled with poems. It is English poetry’s strength as well as its weakness. The problem is, to an untrained eye, the 4th grader’s output is indistinguishable from a poet of merit. It is a little like Modern Art that faces a similar crisis. Except for the discerning eye of the connoisseur, for the rest of us, my child’s scribble and the Master’s work look much the same. 

 In some sense, writing English poetry has a disarming ease. “I went to the market” is a simple sentence. “To the market went I” becomes a poem! Just a little change in the construct and you have a prospective poem. Once you have the first line in your poem, you simply hunt down all rhyming words from A to Z looking for the right fit. You now have a set to play with- “Buy, die, fie, guy, high, lie...”. You finally settle for “buy” since it is connected to the “market” in the first line. The second line is now ready to team up with the first. ”To the market went I; apples, oranges and a lot more to buy!” The third line will be a fresh line. The fourth will rhyme with the third. You get it? It is simply too easy and reams and reams of poetry can be written this way! 

 At least, English poetry with rhyme has a certain cadence. You can read it loudly and it sounds nice. “To the market went I” when read loudly has a tingling effect, regardless of the common-place meaning. However, modern poets don’t subscribe to rhyme any more. This is a bigger problem. At best, the poems look like prose except for the trailing ellipsis, those tiny three dots at the end of the line. Now, “I went to the market...” itself is a poem. You just need to replace the full-stop with an ellipsis. School magazines, personal diaries and facebook pages are filled with these new poems. A third brand of English poetry has also found its way. In this form of poetry, you do not have to write even a sentence. You stack up a few words right out of the dictionary. “Anguish, Angst, Anger” That’s it! Voila! The poem is ready and can serve as a poetic response to any of the current social ills. 

 We have reached a point where we have lost the norm to evaluate English Poetry. Anyway, no one wants to evaluate. When we flip through the school English textbooks, we continue to see only Wordsworth and Keats and Browning. We wonder why none of these modern poets can find a place in school textbooks. We may not have seen Bradman in Cricket. However, we can relate to greatness in sport today through a Virat Kohli. On the same lines, shouldn’t a modern exponent of English Poetry walk into the school textbooks? 

All Indian regional languages have a rich tradition of poetry. It is a heritage that has come down to us. When lines of poetry are read out to an audience in a regional language, there is an immediate response- a “wah wah” for each line. Some beautiful turn of the phrase, some deft expression, there is an inexplicable delicate nicety to the lines that evokes instant relish.In contrast, a reading of English Poetry has a somewhat muted appeal. Not that it falls totally flat, but it fails to stimulate the senses to the same extent. At times, we are drowned with archaic usage like “thy”, “thine” and “thou” in the poems. It is jarring to the modern ear and we just cannot go past this barrier. Also, the locales for traditional English poems have a distant setting- Scottish highlands with its vales and dales. Though human feeling is universal and transcends location, still, the particular aspect of the poem is lost on us. It is a little like a polar bear from the Siberian regions that has accidentally strayed into Chennai and that too in the sweltering heat of summer. There is just so much commonality possible for both the bear and us to make each other feel truly comfortable. 

 A controversial streak runs through the mind- May be, English has limited tools for writing appealing poetry, lines that can truly touch the heart. Perhaps, the synonyms are limited. Perhaps, the words are scattered in all shapes and sizes and cannot be easily fitted in an attractive poetic meter. May be, it lacks the ability to coin new compound-nouns, words that can leap out with a meaning far different from the individual nouns. Conversational English is simple. It serves the purpose. English Prose is just fine. It has a bigger canvas and the elaboration compensates for the peculiar problems faced by English Poetry. As a language of Science and Technology, we appreciate English’s brevity. As a computer programming language, English is more than adequate. Only Poetry...where art thou?

Madras Mail

The railway line between Mumbai and Chennai has been operational since 1871! Much water has flowed since then, including a change in the names of the cities. In these days of instant messaging, it baffles the mind to know that a train ran each day just to carry mail. My memory goes back to the second half of the previous century. The Madras Mail started from Bombay VT at the stroke of ten at night. It ran the whole of the next day, and reached Madras in the wee hours of the third morning. Each journey was momentous, and in recollection now, it assumes a fairy-tale fondness! 

 Air-conditioned, sound-proofed compartments were non-existent. We listened to the raw sounds of the rail, the rhythmic clatter, the engine hoot and the guard's whistle. Pressing the forehead to the window, we peered into the darkness of the night as the train hurried out of Bombay. Lulled by the train's gentle rocking, sleep overpowered us. In semi-sleep, we continued to monitor the train's progress- the round of tunnels through the Western Ghats, the lonesome "chikki" peddler marking the arrival of Lonavla and the change in the engine at Pune. 

 We woke up in time for breakfast at Solapur. Peddlers competed with each other to outshout the other with "coffee-coffee" and "chai-chai". The compartment was a foodie's delight- the air redolent with the confusing crisscross scents of steaming idli and bubbling sambar, sizzling poha and wholesome upma. Through the rest of the day, the train covered the entire Deccan Plateau. The flag-posts were fixed- lunch at Raichur and early dinner at Guntakal. The sun was a constant fixture; it scorched the earth showing little mercy. A furnace raged outside the train and within. A bottle of "cool-drinks" was elixir, that only a parched throat on that train can understand; none else! From time to time, little hamlets greeted us with a wave of hands from little children. The mind wondered wistfully, what if fate had willed otherwise, and we were born in one of these homes. Sometimes, rail-crossings resulted in a sudden halt in no man's land for aeons. It would take a wake-up call of a thundering train in the opposite direction, to shake the Mail from its stupor. We cross-checked with the "Railway Timetable" handbook and grumbled that the train was running late by a couple of hours. 

 A host of stations went by, there was "Hotgi" and "Kurduwadi", "Wadi" and "Raichur", "Yerraguntla" and "Adoni". The train thundered over the Krishna River and the Tungabhadra, both a kilometer in breadth, an expanse of sand with a ribbon of water in the summer months. A basketful of juicy guavas announced the arrival of Kondapuram. As the sun went down, the landscape cooled and huge boulders and rock formations marked Guntakal Junction. It was time for dinner- crisp dosas, a generous bite into "medhu vada" and piping hot coffee! 

 A sense of impatience marked the rest of the journey. We had sat too long and now wanted to reach Madras at the earliest. But the Madras Mail showed no urgency. It reached Cudappah before sleep time with peddlers pacing the platform with trays of cool rose-milk. By 2:00 am, it neared Renigunta with the twinkling lights of the Tirumala Hills in the distance. A flurry of poly-syllabic stations whizzed past after Arakkonam. The "holdalls" and blankets had to be packed up in a hurry even as we begged to be allowed to sleep for more time. As the train negotiated the bend at Basin Bridge and pulled into Madras Central, it was still dark. We would alight to a brand new world at Madras for a full two months. Bombay was some distant planet.