Poetry Reads: The Wolf on Poetry

Howwwwwwl. More precisely, Wolf here. 

In the human world, especially on moonless nights and sun-filled days, I moon about as a promising writer, poet, and lyricist who has been promising for several centuries now. Why, I even had a set of thousand visiting cards made for distribution that would lure the female of the species, well...into visiting. Anyway, I have to type these words fast, the clouds are just beginning to scatter and a light gleam of silver spreads in the firmament. My fingers have already turned to claws, thus facilitating immensely in typing any number of words in as much time as lightning strikes. Kaboom.     

This is how I see it. Poetry is a free bird's melody, uttered so, for it sprouts from the heart, and is similarly written down. Having a writing device on the ready is a handy habit, for words may rush in anytime. A common feature of a poem is its flow and spontaneity. The first draft is usually the crux of it. Polish, in the form of attention to meter, rhyme, paragraphing, punctuation, grammar, spelling and an appropriate title usually follow in subsequent drafts. While I mentioned grammar in the last sentence, a poem can have its own language. Unlike prose, a poem may not be bound to any structure.

There is no end to the themes that poets have chosen to write on over the centuries. Now, if we were to encapsulate all the poems ever written into two sections, what would they be? Here we trail Urdu poetry and its branching out into two - there is the ghazal where poets tend to self-reflect and look inwardly. Then there is the nazm where observation of the surrounding world is the central theme. This division can be applied to poems in general, if only for the purpose of differentiation and documentation.

Enough talk, to conclude here is the poem that was first published in Reading Hour Magazine's September-October 2011 issue, with the title ‘Pang’. It is presented here with my edits:

Fragrance
by Snehith Kumbla

the music of a drizzle,
wet smell of earth

a sun scattered face,
some winter morning

the moonlight walks
with me, at dusk

sleep glows in
a deep cave

I dwell on you...

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)