What is it about some lines of poetry that make them stick? And come to get often quoted, commanding a kind of guiding quality across cultures and for generations. Some of these lines could well be the result of sharp marketing, but most others acquire a universal, lasting appeal, almost organically. In a world of depleting attention spans and fleeting impressions, some of these very simple-sounding lines have stayed the course, guiding wisely and gently. What’s even more heartening is that these lines of poetry have earned resonance not just for the generations that grew up in an analogue world of books but have also found relevance and resonance with today’s wired millennials.
There isn’t a music concert, a ‘mela’, an art exhibition or similar creative forums where Tagore, Rumi, Ghalib, Cohen or their poetic cousins don’t show up. If they aren’t quoted verbally, they speak out of tote bags and t-shirts. But immortal lines of poetry aren’t restricted to creative forums and gatherings alone. In offices too, they manage to mark a quiet presence out of a coffee mug or a coaster. Your accountant colleague surprises you with a Rumi mug that reads, ‘What you seek is seeking you’, whereas your CEO has Kipling’s ‘If’ hung on his wall. Parliamentarians who redeem their cacophony by borrowing a verse or two and quoting a couplet, always receive hearty applause, often from both sides of the house. And whether it makes any apparent sense or not, there are cities like Calcutta, where a metro railway station is named ‘Gitanjali’, after the award-winning collection of poems by the Nobel Laureate.
How then does something as seemingly fragile as poetry, which if dissected is nothing more than a string of words, last and tackle the onslaught of unending curated feed and headlines, mind-boggling data and alluring visuals? Or should the question be - what makes some poems stand out and stand tall? Perhaps, one of the secrets can be found in an understated sensibility that everlasting poems have, where they tend to suggest an idea or an alternative without pounding it too heavily or advocating it with a clenched fist; leaving enough room for each reader to interpret it the way she likes and in offering more of a perspective rather than claiming to be the only truth. Perhaps a poet brews a thought or an emotion in herself well enough to be able to craft it in words with such precision that her own experiences and expressions forge bonds, far beyond her own reckoning.
It was none other than Ruskin Bond who once said that once all the wars were done, a butterfly would still be beautiful. Perhaps the same is the hallmark of good poetry.
Supriya Newar is a Kolkata-based writer, poet, music aficionado and communications consultant. She may be reached at connect@supriyanewar.com, Instagram: @supriyanewar, Facebook: supriya.newar and LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/supriya-newar