Poems on Poems

PREFACE:

These poems are about poems. The art of poetry. These are meditations on poetic art. I want to call them poetic-essays, because it is not easy to define them as poems in the contemporary sense. And yet, the word ‘poems’ used in the poems of this little book, refer not just to poetry as it is classified separately from other arts. ‘Poems’ for me, here, refers to all the creative forms of expression, be it novel, essay, poetry, cinema or paintings.

So this little book is a collection of poetic essays on the subject of creative expression. Not that I have covered all the aspects of the subject matter. Also, there is no order, as we find in essays. There is a sense of completeness in them, which is intentional, because as I see it, we can never know wholly what makes us creative. And it is better not to. Poetic Art should be an ever evolving effort.

One may call my poetic reflections as poetic aphorisms. And perhaps that is what they are. Poetic aphorisms of a mind trying to understand what makes ‘us’ creative & what is creativity. I don’t think I have found an answer. Yet.

And yet, should we really look for answers in others?

That is why another book on Ars Poetica, in the tradition of Horace. And another invitation for humans- to have a partial sense of what ticks those creative monads in us into play. These poetic essays are important, in my humble opinion.

I say nothing more, because they have said enough.

Here is the list: 

• who is a poet
• a poet is a poem
• why does one write
• poetry is existence for some
• dead ants on pages
• when do we write
• poetry is nothingness
• what happens when we write
• what the poet said
• poesy is a squirrel
• poetry is nightfall
• poetry is democratic
• a poem is a void
• poetry is a pond
• poems aren’t supposed to have meanings
• a poem is one if it makes you reread it
• poets write when they don’t want to
• poets are clouds & poems rain
• how does a poet live
• how a love poem gets formed
• how a poem cures insomnia
• poetry is a schizophrenic impulse
• poems define time
• writing spree
• poems are solutions
• poetry only comes suddenly
• poetry is useless
• poetry is a response to the void
• yearning for a baby verse
• why most poems are meaningless
• poetic cum
• poetry is an archer peeing
• a poet writes so that they don’t
• when poems don’t come
• a few words suffice
• ship of metaphors
• phases of writing a poem
• poetry is perspiration
• why do i write
• why do i live

- Nachi Keta