Criticism

A critic has quite an easy job; that of passing judgement whether apiece is a success or a flop, yet he enjoys a position over those who may or may have not offered their work for his criticism. Most critics, however, thrive on negative criticism, which they claim is fun and easy to write. Truth be told, the hallmark of a true critic is presenting to the fore the artistry that has gone into weaving apiece. That is why I become very sad when looking at things with an extensive view that, that average piece which has been christened as a ‘flop’ is most often more important, is often more artistic than that criticism that baptised it so. In most cases, those critics who are loudest in critiquing other people’s work once wrote what A. Pope calls, “… a dull receipt on how poetry should be written…”.

          According to me, poetry is something spontaneous and therefore no one can be taught how it is written: to be a poet is to possess a capacity beyond your conscious control. I cannot wake up one day and say, “today I want to compose a poem”. That is why the Greeks had a deity responsible for the art of poetry making. Whenever a poet started writing, they would invoke her guidance all through the process. It was and is still divine art. That explains my reason for taking offense at the speeches, which I consider jocular, for calling poetry old and dead. Moreover, you have suggested that poets are born: misleading our senses twice.

          Poetry is a product of two processes of the mind viz. creativity and reason. The one- that is creativity- has been defined by Sir Ken Robinson as that process of coming up with original ideas that add value. The other- that is reason- is the power of the human mind to arrange ideas in a logical way. That is why a poet is referred to as a freethinker, a reformer and an apostle of reason who laid the foundation, a deep foundation, upon which knowledge of the whole is gotten. Nay, poetry is the baby feed that humanity has used to fathom tougher knowledges. No wonder children at play always sing: they are always taught through songs.    

            To be a poet past the twenty-fifth year (that is a serious poet) one has to learn poetic tradition: and, what is this tradition? Is it writing solely in verse? Is it apiece that is solely done in rhyme? Well according to T. S Eliot in his Tradition and Individual Talent says, “(tradition) cannot be inherited, and if you want it, you must obtain it with great labour… it involves in the first place the historical sense which we may call indispensible to anyone who would continue to be a poet past 25^th year…” In a nutshell, Eliot is suggesting that one has to read, and, in reading poets follow sir Francis Bacon’s wise counsel- read neither to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse but to weigh and consider: such that reading becomes a way for emancipation, a road for liberation of the fallacies that had been acquired. Ideally, either writers are always unlearning by forgetting or by disapproving the fallacies, they had earlier acquired. Nay, every work of art has elements craftsmanship in it, and it is only in reading that the poet acquires the strands that went into that particular work. That is why, “in reading… literature, I become a thousand men yet I remain myself,” to use the words of the famous Irish essayist and novelist Clive Stance Lewis.