Penetrating Poetry: An Examination of Cultural Poetry

Penetrating Poetry:

An Examination of Cultural Poetry

Every country, culture, and time period has had poets living within their society to help record the very essence of which their people live. These poets, known for expressing raw emotion, have become particularly talented at expressing their experiences. From Australia to England, Japan to Pakistan, during the ninth century or the twentieth, poets have learned to capture their true meaning of the word "love."

Christopher Brennan was an Australian poet, librarian, and lecturer born 1870, passing away in 1932. Among the many famous pieces he wrote was, "Because She Would Ask Me Why I Love Her." Brennan expresses romantic frustration and dissatisfaction with the question of why he loves his significant other. When questioned, he replies to her, vividly and picturesque: Do not ask why I love you, or if I love you (Brennan, 2010). He claims that his love will last forever, and that his significant other gives him reason to live a true, happy life. Throughout the verses of the poem, he provides proof of how questions of "if" and "why" do not pertain to his understanding of the emotion of love. He claims that asking questions may make a person wise, but it does not lead them to seek the compassion of another (Brennan, 2010). If one is making a statement, it informs all those around them, but it cannot make one seek another. With a final statement, he claims that without love in our hearts and souls in our bodies, people could not seek love from others. He states that this is how he knows he loves her (Brennan, 2010). Brennan's interpretation of love concludes that love is something that cannot be explained; it is a feeling in his heart, and "if" and "why" are unable to assist in the explanation of it.

English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a different belief on the meaning of love. A homeschooled woman born in the early seventeenth century, Barrett Browning married poet Robert Browning, and the romance in her poetry demonstrated to readers the power that true love had over one's hearts and emotions. In the poem "How Do I Love Thee?" Barrett Browning asks not of how it is possible that she love Robert, but in how many ways she loved him. Throughout the poem, Barrett Browning listed all the ways possible that she love: Deep, tall, feeling, religious, through day and night, and as though she had loved as a child who had never been harmed by love before. The infatuation Barrett Browning had for Robert was like that of new love, though she claims the feeling would last through ages and past her death (Barrett Browning, n.d.). The poem recalled the first love of everyone's heart, or perhaps, the final love. According to Barrett Browning, love is indeed a feeling within the heart, but it is possible to explain it using language.

Ono no Komachi was a ninth century Japanese poet. Her romantic poem, labeled in English as "Number 658" in Kokin Wakashu, an anthology of poems, was first published in the twelfth century. The description of love Komachi writes of begins with an almost spiritual tone. She speaks of love in the same way one would imagine a Christian seeking the Lord. The poet travels to love along a dreamy path, putting the reader at ease as though traveling to heaven. Komachi speaks of a period of courtship, as if it was so fast, but to answer her only Earthly wish: To feel love (Komachi, n.d.). In the romantic verses of her poetry, Komachi explains that the meaning of love is something that can only be felt within the heart and the mind, as a spirit and as a memory.

Renowned Pakistani poet and son of Sultan Mohammad Khan, Faiz Ahmed Faiz was famous for his Urdu written poetry. Faiz wrote during the early and mid-twentieth century (Faiz, n.d.), and managed to capture the innocent simplicity of love through his poem, translated to English as, "Deep in Love." Unlike the other poetry samples mentioned, Faiz describes love as actions that only true lovers may fully know and appreciate (Faiz, n.d.). Deep in love, the writer speaks of love as the feeling of being able to openly express any feelings without fear. Cheek on check, hand in hand, lovers know the feeling that, no matter how hard a smitten couple tried, they could not get close enough to each other physically. The couple in the poem had the traits of new, adolescent love, talking for hours on end until the sun rose (Faiz, n.d.).

Every country and every culture has its poets. No matter what crevice of the world, no matter what century, those poets were not afraid to express their version of the meaning of love. Christopher Brennan claims love is a feeling that cannot be questioned, while Elizabeth Barrett Browning argues that love is within every breath and action of our being. Ono no Komachi expands to explain love as a spiritual gift of which the brain and the heart can recall, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz claims it is the simple, everyday intangible gifts that couple's exchange. No matter where one lives, the experience of understanding love is possible through the writings of their poets.

Poems of References

"Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her" by Christopher Brennan

If questioning would make us wise

No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;

If all our tale were told in speech

No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh

And love not bound in hearts of flesh

No aching breasts would yearn to meet

And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows

The secret powers by which he grows?

Were knowledge all, what were our need

To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"

I love you now until I die.

For I must love because I live