When we consider poetry, most of us yawn and some of us even groan. The most you can get from the young generation when they are asked about what poetry is to them, they will mention a poem that they read in school or college from their textbooks. For them, poetry is confined to books and shelves only. We, being students, also shared their views had you asked us a few years earlier what poetry was to us - and our answer to this question would have been Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. We don’t know for sure why, but Wordsworth appealed to a lot of us in a way no one else did. May be it was his magnificent sketch of the English countryside or maybe it was his deep insight into the human nature or may be it was just the way he used simple language to present great ideas. Poetry is exactly like that; it’s hard to define and it’s even harder to describe how it affects us or why its affects are so profound. Poetry, in a sense, is the art of making nothing mean something. Famous French poet and playwright, Jean Cocteau, once said: “A true poet does not bother to be poetic. Much in the way a gardener does not scent his roses.” True poetry is often regarded as having no meaning but the one the reader ascribes to it.

 Poetry is an art which outdates literacy itself. The earliest trace of poetry is believed to have been orally recited or sung. Following the development of writing, poetry became a prime medium of expressing thoughts and ideas. Initially, poetry developed as increasingly structured and designed form; however, much poetry since the late 20th century has moved away from traditional forms towards the more vaguely defined free verse and prose poem, free from all bounds and limitations of structure and form.

The journey of poetry in written form can be considered to have begun from the great legends of poetry in the form of Vergil, Sophocles, Homer and Horace. Later on, Chaucer turned the direction of poetry to a whole new height after writing a social reformatory poem criticising the corrupt practices of the church in The Canterbury Tales in the Middle Age. The Renaissance poetry soared to a new level - Shakespeare’s sonnets, Spencer’s Faerie Queen and Sidney’s Arcadia brought havoc into the world of poetry. And the ultimate revolution was brought on by the Romantics who trampled the centuries old traditions in English poetry. But the subversion of the 20th century poets changed the face of English poetry, forever. T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are some of the poets who paid no heed to the poetic convention, and generated a revolt through the medium of poetry. But this vast literary history would seem completely insignificant if you cannot comprehend why poetry has such a huge impact on our lives. Poetry makes us realise that we all have the same basic needs and it takes us back to our basic human nature and excavates our differences. Poetry was used as a way to record cultural, historical, political and religious events. Poetry provides a window to understand the culture and traditions of the people of the past.

The journey of poetry never ends; it changes shapes, styles and genres but has always played a significant and vital role in the lives of people. Poetry is a universal language. It captures individual experiences that become universal. Poetry, in short, can be described as a force that binds all the people all around the world together. Paul Valéry, a renowned French Symbolist poet observes, “Poetry is difficult to define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain state of mind.” Poetry is not something that can be contained in lines and kept on shelves; it is a mind alive on shelves that speaks of an unforgettable journey to the past, present and future.