Dear reader,
It was December. A Saturday special class for BA English students was on at Christ College, Irinjalakuda. Rev. Fr Antony Kuttikat was about to finish the class when he picked up the book he had put down a few minutes ago to chat with the students, and started again reading the first stanza of the poem he was teaching.
The middle-aged priest read the lines, carefully and emotionally, panting mildly.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping...”
He paused as if someone had interrupted, looked mildly annoyed, then continued.
The poem was Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, a narrative poem renowned for its dark atmosphere and musicality, which explores themes of grief, loss, and the supernatural. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator who is mourning the loss of his beloved Lenore. One bleak December night, a raven enters his room and perches on a bust of Pallas. The raven’s only utterance is the word “Nevermore”, which becomes a haunting refrain because for the narrator it is about himself and Lenore.
Kuttikattachan was in his element as he explained the supernatural in the poem, and the whole class was able to identify with the themes of love and loss in the poem.
“As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Then, voila, we all heard a “Tok, Tok”. The entire class fell silent. They saw where it was coming from. A crow, which to our hallucinated eyes looked exactly like the raven Poe had brought to life in the poem, was at the tall French windows of the classroom.
We took some time to process the fact that the crow had been there for a while and that it was tapping on the shutters, now looking at us, now away. “This is magic,” beamed the Catholic priest, a devout fan of literature and of poetry. “This is the magic of poetry, which is why Somerset Maugham calls it ‘the crown of literature’.” As he closed the book the entire class looked at the crow, which looked a bit confused, gave a feeble “craah”, then vanished into the air, leaving a spellbound class behind.
Of course, we were idiots and it was obviously just an ordinary crow. Such a moment in any other class would have been a comic one, but in a class where poetry was taught, where “The Raven” was being read, it became a profound moment that we, both students and teacher, wanted to believe was a moment of supernatural magic produced by the powers of poetry. A thought many of us, including this writer, still carry with us.
Why do we read poetry? Samuel Taylor Coleridge called poetry the best words in the best order. But if you ask someone who loves to read poetry, you will get an answer that might mean more than that. My favourite is perhaps what James Joyce, whom many know only as an author of complex novels but not as a poet, said: “Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.”
Poetry matters in ways we often overlook and often don’t realise. It is not just a luxury for the intellectually inclined—poetry is a necessity for the human soul. It’s a way of making sense of the world around us, of processing our experiences, of finding beauty in the mundane, and meaning in the chaotic.
Does a novel do the same? Or a short story? My answer is no. Spanish writer José Bergamín once said that the novel is born of disillusionment; the poem of despair. But poetry isn’t just about despair, is it? It’s about the entire spectrum of human experience, compressed into a few lines that resonate in the deepest parts of our being. See how Emily Dickinson captures the essence of hope in just a few words:
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all...”
A simple metaphor, comparing hope to a bird, speaks volumes about the resilience of the human spirit. It’s this ability of poetry to distil complex emotions and experiences into something tangible, something we can hold onto, that makes it so powerful.
The next time you look in the mirror, remember you are not just flesh and bone, or just a collection of cells and synapses. You are a poem, intricate and beautiful, complex and simple, a work in progress that will never be truly finished. And like all great poems, you have the power to touch hearts, to change minds, to leave a mark on the world.
These stray thoughts came to me, dear reader, as I read this beautiful article by Prathyush Parasuramanabout the challenges of translating poetry. Prathyush offers many thought-provoking perspectives, but his piece is important because translation is a vital process that helps poetry travel to new places, reach new readers, and connect with unfamiliar geographies. Prathyush is provocative and he is moving. Read what he has to say. And tell us if you agree. And write back with your favourite lines of poetry, whether original or borrowed.
Wishing you a lovely week ahead,
For Frontline,
Jinoy Jose P.
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