On The Political Or Nonpolitical Poetry
Por: Ataol Behramoğlu
Poetry can talk on everything.
Every fact can be the subject of poetry.
The poetical problem doesn’t concern the subject but it does in which way that subject is seen and perceived and how it is transformed in to poetry.
Your purpose of writing a poem should be political or not.
Existent magnificent poems inspired by political themes while there are others written by nonpolitical impulsions and not worthy a button.
And of course the contrary is true too.
The essential thing, I believe, is to be able to create in readers or in audience a feeling of beauty, an excitement, concerning that miracle, that we are calling life.
But how, in which way a poet can succeed it?
There isn’t any formula to do it.
Every poet should undoubtedly have the immense technical knowledges of making poetry.
But I believe that there is another necessity which isn’t less important than this one.
It’s to feel the explicit or implicit movements of the contemporary life and to reveal with the language of poetry the yet unconsciously quivering feelings and expectations in human kind.
As regards the language of poetry its not simply the conversational language or only metaphorical sayings, but a more complicated thing including them too.
That language has in itself beside the individual voices of poets, the internal and external voices of the time flowing over, of all the life in brief.
You can not take off from this complex substance the fact that is said policy.
A poem concerning the individual life or another one written with a certain political aim can equally have a strong effect on the masses.
İf we are talking on poetry…
Now I would like to touch on another important and more actual question concerning the poetry.
Why poet and poetry lost their importance that they had once?
I will not repeat the facts that we all are knowing.
We all know that the human being has alienated to his own existence during some last centuries.
I think that the problem concerning the poetry is essentially related just to this fact.
Poetry is something essential for human being, the deepest form of the expression of his existence…
It is totally understandable that it loses its importance and value if the human being is going to lose them.
If we believe in this common destiny of poetry and human kind, its not difficult to draw an inference:
Poetry can recover its importance and value that it had once, only through the releasing of human being from the alienation.
In other words, salvation or annihilation for both of them, is a shared, common destiny.
In this case, I believe, poet has to feel his(or her) irrecusable ,decisive responsibility and mission.
As the conclusion I would like to say that the problems of all poets are common too regardless of their individual, different comprehensions on poetry .
Sometimes we must go out of our personal workshops for flicking through the works of others, for improving and expanding the capacity of the self-criticism.
And the most important I think, is to unit and organize our forces and talents for retrieval our missing mission and our place in society.
Poetry festivals have a special importance in this case.
