Friday 26 June 2009

poetry*

the trick is to empty the mind of all thoughts.

i have noticed how thoughts bog me down--thoughts of this and that--planning, scheming, wishing, fretting... always struggling to become.

the unburdening of thoughts is easier said than done. one cannot do it by trying. it has to happen without trying.

watch passively each thought that comes in through the door; watch it do its work.

then, by and by, you find it leaving by the same door it had entered.

only in the spacious silence of this emptiness is there poetry.

writing poetry is not important. you should not turn it into another burden. just be... as when you were a child, seeing everything for the first time, seeing the stupendous wonder of it all.

there is a different quality to the state of just being.

suddenly you begin to feel the wind on your face, see the clouds drifting in the skies and hear the birds singing in the trees. you feel your pulse beating in the arteries of every being around you. the whole flows into you.

then there is an overflowing.

in this overflowing is the flowering of poetry.

writing it can never be the same.

*****
(*letter to a friend confronting writer's block.)
*****

4 comments:

Balachandran V said...

very rightly said, Venu! Poetry is the rediscovery of oneself, and like a child, we look at ourselves afresh, we look at our surroundings afresh. But, emptying mind of thoughts is not easy for us common mortals, is it? Of course, we do have such momentary experiences, like when you gaze at a mountain or a beautiful bird or a happy young puppy. Mind ceases to exist then, there are no thoughts, no reflections, just you and the observed. It is in that oneness mind ceases to exist. When I write a poem, intensely, all I see are the images , and all i feel is the excitement of the words to jump out of me.

P. Venugopal said...

i write not with any certainty, balan. dissolve yourself into the scene (or away from the scene) and look around you. things tick in a different way when you are not a player, a stakeholder, an observer with a self of your own detacted from the observed. this is some kind of meditation, i guess. such moments have poetry. obviously, we cannot be in such a stage all the time, because we have to make a living, live up to certain expectations, play our part, plan ahead, keep appointments... but with a measure of alertness, we can keep both things apart: what we have to perforce do to conform, detached from what we are. with alertness, i think we can swing from one side to the other like a freely swinging pendulum. some fortunate people do it naturally without even knowing about it. and some of us, as it had happened to me, get stuck on the noisy side, losing the poetry of the other side. we should set the pendulum swinging again.

Kalpana Bindu said...

It seems you have written J K's stuff in the form of poetry. Poetry is truly a rediscovering one self.
One of the finest poems I have ever read.
Unburdening of thoughts, even i tried ...till I learnt it has to happen without trying.

Amazing..!

P. Venugopal said...
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