What constitutes the essence of poetry?

 

When we consider what constitutes the essence of poetry, we are confronted with a variety of questions none of which may be answered with final satisfaction. One feature that seems to emerge repeatedly through time is the notion of imagination and the term ‘poetic imagination’ to depict the emotional, imaginative, intellectual and the expressive language used to reflect the writer’s consciousness. This paper primarily aims to demonstrate the core finding of my research in the concepts, theories and ideas of poetic imagination. The research characterizes a series of modes of imagination in contemporary poetry. These modes have been drawn from the existing notions and concepts of poetic imagination. The research identifies that imagination in contemporary poetry moves more towards imaging rather than poetic imagination. In other words, imagination shows greater affinity to imaging in contemporary poetry. This paper primarily presents the significant contribution of the overall research which is the conceptualization of a paradigm of various modes of imagination in contemporary poetry, with imaging and poetic imagination as its two ends. Other modes of creative imagination reside between imaging and poetic imagination. 

Although today we use the term ‘poetic imagination’ liberally especially in discussions of poetry, literature, arts and aesthetics, we find that in attributing a concrete specification to the concept of poetic imagination, we remain with something inherently protean in character and fugitive in conventional literary terms. This means that poetic imagination is being used freely without referring to specific definitions in literary terms or its manifestations in critical/literary analysis of a poem/text. My research in the concepts, theories and ideas of imagination highlights the implicit nature of studies on poetic imagination in contemporary poetry and literature. The research manifested an exploration of contemporary notions of poetic imagination in poetry and literature and provided insights into the current nature of this concept. The account of the existence of other modes of imagination apart from poetic imagination and discussing the level and amount of creativity, imaginativeness and poeticality of these modes create an opportunity to explain the manifestations of creative imagination in the contemporary poetry and literature. There is a tremendous emphasis on image in contemporary poetry, literature and art in particular and humanities and arts in general, which manifests a change in the treatments that the concept of imagination has received compared with the past. This reflects that the notion of poetic imagination in contemporary poetry and literature carry a different sense of (creative) imagination. The research identifies that imagination in contemporary poetry and literature moves more towards imaging rather than poetic imagination. In other words, imagination shows greater affinity to imaging in contemporary poetry and literature.

The effect of a good poem, Coleridge says, is to make us see life anew, to remove “the film of familiarity” which sets at length on all our thoughts and perceptions. An imaginative poem is characterized by its “awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us” (1817). The naïve belief that writing re-produces reality rather than re-figuring and re-imagining it through forms of images, signs and emblems, leaves contemporary poetry and literature to show an absence of wildness, transformation and surprise. Imagination in poetry remains as important as it ever was, although now it is extended from the faculty by which we engage the world to the faculty by which we take our stand on why that engagement might matter. We must acknowledge that our age has produced competent poems with different sense of imagination, but largely moving away from poetic imagination