EDITORIAL BOARD
FORMULAST
From Senior Editor
1. FREE POET WRITES
BOTH OLD SCHOOL &
FREE VERSE POEMS.
2. SMART POET TRIES
ALL STYLES AND
CREATES SOMETHING
NEW AND DEEP.
3. RESTRICTIONS AND
DISCOMFORT CAN LEADS
POET TO THE NEW HIGHS.
4. NOT ANYONE CAN BE
A POET. THERE IS NO
DEMOCRACY, NO
TOLERANCE FOR
MEDIOCRITY.
5. TRUE POET CAN BE
ANYONE HE WANT, ALL
KIND OF ART IS
REACHABLE FOR HIM.
6. KEEP YOUR HEART
WARM, SHARPEN YOUR
BRAINS - DUMB POET
HAS A QUILL FROM
CHICKEN NUGGETS.
ARIA LIGI:-EDITOR
When thinking on poetry and where we are today, it
may be good to consider where we have come from. In
the sixteenth century poetry was often compared to
painting, and indeed there was a great deal of rivalry
between the two arts, poetry being likened to painting
with words, while an artist who held a brush, created
poetry on a canvas (or sometimes wood panel or wall in the case of frescoes),
using color and sometimes egg whites (which were used as the base for paints).
Poetry at that time was not only spoken, but sometimes sung. Bards, such as
Spenser, Arisoto, Shakespeare, Petrarch and others perfected the form of
sonnets to such a degree that they were hailed as masters of rhyme who
danced within their stanzas much as a ballerina extending her leg and then
spinning into a flawless pirouette. In the seventeenth century Milton, using
biblical stories as his backdrop wrote Paradise Lost, which became and still is a
revered classic. In the late eighteenth century, Robert Burns, though from
humble beginnings, wrote heartfelt and grand poems depicting: nature, love
and beauty that to this day are unsurpassed. When we come to the eighteenth
and nineteenth century, the age of Enlightenment, and the Romantics, there
was a surge not just in poetry, but in the craftsmanship of it. Poetry at this time
was used as a means to not only express love and longing, but as a siren railing
against the misfortunes of the poor and inequities that are result of class.
Wordsworth was the man who started this, by writing poems which were not
just meant for the elite classes, but for the common man. In addition, he wrote
not only about the common man, but placed that same man in the very poems
he was writing. They were central to the themes of injustice, inequity, poverty,
and the rights of the plebian in society. When the industrial revolution came,
and along with it the steam trains, Wordsworth spoke for the very existence
nature, the trees, flowers, and all wildlife. It was due to his poetry that he was
able to halt the construction of the steam train from going through his beloved
North Country. While this may seem like a small victory, it exemplifies the power
of verse. However, Wordsworth was not the only poet to make a difference.
Leigh Hunt, who was the editor, and publisher (along with his brother John) of
the Examiner during the eighteenth century, used his paper as a platform to
oppose the oppressive regime that reigned in England, and even published
poetry which taunted and mocked the monarchy. Hunt’s Examiner was the only
paper at that time which was not in bed with the government. In the twentieth
century poetry evolved from a more strict format to what is called ‘free verse’
and thus changed from the tight structure of the sonnet, ode or formed
stanzas, into a more or less, anything goes standard. Poets such as Ginsberg,
Ferlinghetti, and Gary Snyder ushered in a male form of verse which derided
traditional form to the point where craft, structure, art and sometimes even
theme were all but absent. One could no longer liken poetry to the steps within
a waltz, because the steps themselves had been stripped away and the dancer
had