Poetry, like everything else that is important in life, is difficult to define. Above all, poetry is art. The dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language defines it as: “The manifestation of beauty or aesthetic feeling through the medium of the word, in verse or in prose.” As this definition indicates, the fundamental elements of poetry are rhythm and the WORD.
Everything contains an inner word that designates its essence. Apart from the grammatical meaning of language, there is a magic and profound meaning that brings us closer to the soul of things. The poet must discover this hidden genius, this magic past contained in the word, turning it into a bridge for the transmission of ideas, feelings and values which belong to the human being beyond times and fashion.
Poetry has no past or future, it is the created and the creative word, which unfolds at the dawn of humanity. Its purpose is to point out the distance between what we see and what we imagine. The poet creates outside the world that exists, he creates what ought to exist, he tries to express the ineffable. It is the language of creation, the language of those who try to decipher the journey through the world, of those who want to listen to the heartbeat of existence, of those who are searching to discover the sound of the universe. Through the poet’s pen, the universe is seeking its voice, beauty finds its most intimate expression.
The poet perceives the subtle links that unite all things, he hears the secret voices of human hearts and enables words that are apparently expressing opposite realities to come together, thus tearing aside the veils that separate them.
When language becomes a ceremony and appears with the light of its initial purity, far from all the superficial coverings that do not harbour true ideas, the poet transforms himself into the Master who takes our hand in order to lead us beyond the true and the false, beyond reason and fantasy, beyond life and death, beyond space and time, beyond the ultimate horizon, beyond spirit and matter, beyond the apex of the pyramid. His eyes contemplate a more sublime reality which turns the word into living fire. And this burning flame of the inner word opens the soul of the human being and gives it wings, transporting it to a higher level, leaving behind reasonings and speculative arguments. It is then that we are in the presence of “true poetry”, a transcendent poetry, comprehensible and beautiful.
If we take up the Platonic idea that poetry is related to the Beautiful and is a radiance of the True, it can be an alchemical element that makes it possible, not only to transform, but also to transmute the reality of the awakened human being. For all these reasons, poetry is a challenge to reason, because through it we are able to go beyond the physical meaning of words; and it is then that this alchemical act takes place, going from understanding to SEEING, bringing us naturally closer to the First Ideas, the Archetypes.
To end, I would like to dedicate a tribute to one of the best poets of Spanish literature, Juan Ramón Jiménez who, in his book Eternities, presents poetry as a quest for the essence of life:
“Intelligence, give me the exact name of things!
…So that my word may be the thing itself, recreated by my soul…”
Mª Dolores Gómez