The Help with Poetry thread

[Igu Soni]

Poetry is pain-in-the-ass. Something this beautiful and compelling shouldn't be so bloomin' hard to read.
So here's a thread where we can discuss problems we have with poems we are reading.

First, general questions:
a) Why is traditional poetry written with a capital letter every line? (If poetry was a modern invention I'd say it was because of Word's autocorrect feature, but it's not so there we are.)
b) What difference does it make if you don't put aforementioned capital letters, and all other forms of punctuation?

Couple of specific questions, from Shadow Space by Jayanta Mahapatra:


TRYING TO KEEP STILL

But in secret we seem to hear again
the wailing flutes of burnt-out rice fields
the heartbeats of children who have no fathers
and the silence of one who calls himself God

Crows keep flying through fitful air
but the spaces are empty, nothing fills them anymore
Time has lost its hands, trying to keep still
Like damp clouds widows deaden the light of the sun

We've become used to poor relics of deeds undone
to the body's fear of dying on rainy afternoons
and to you, Woman of my long memory
where you dream still with impudent eyes
while society draws its fateful circle round you again

Is it the vedic India you carry in your bones?
In those words you allow to turn into puppets
which dance at the doors of indifferent temples?
Oh we have heard enough of men who speak like God
while silence listens and bleed away,
hearing only what it wishes to hear

And in secret we hear again
man's bizarre demands, the terrible act of this owning,
and the unwary wind
drowning in the laughter breaking out behind him
(Rather limited) experience has taught me that every line has a logical connection with the ones around it; if you can't see it, it's just amatter of perspective. What I want to know is the logical connection that the last line of the second stanza has to the rest of it. I've been cracking my brain with it for a couple of days now.

Due to typing difficulties, I'll post the next specific doubt or not based on the response to this one.

[Galatea92]

Couple of specific questions, from Shadow Space by Jayanta Mahapatra:

(Rather limited) experience has taught me that every line has a logical connection with the ones around it; if you can't see it, it's just amatter of perspective. What I want to know is the logical connection that the last line of the second stanza has to the rest of it. I've been cracking my brain with it for a couple of days now.

I can't answer your general questions, but here's my take on your specific one. He doesn't use full stops at all in the poem, even when they would be justified, so I would read the second stanza as:



Crows keep flying through fitful air
but the spaces are empty, nothing fills them anymore.
Time has lost its hands, trying to keep still.
Like damp clouds, widows deaden the light of the sun.

The other alternative would be the following, but that doesn't make sense to me:



Crows keep flying through fitful air
but the spaces are empty, nothing fills them anymore.
Time has lost its hands, trying to keep still
Like damp clouds. Widows deaden the light of the sun.

It would obviously have been less ambiguous if he'd put in the punctuation himself :).

[Igu Soni]

He doesn't use full stops at all in the poem, even when they would be justified, so I would read the second stanza as:


Crows keep flying through fitful air
but the spaces are empty, nothing fills them anymore.
Time has lost its hands, trying to keep still.
Like damp clouds, widows deaden the light of the sun.

That makes sense, except that, if you notice, all his other implicit full stops are at the end of the stanza.


It would obviously have been less ambiguous if he'd put in the punctuation himself :).
Kinda gave rise to the general questions, honestly. (Not this poem, but poems like this.)

And, thanks, Galatea.

[beelzebubbles]

I would suggest it is as Igu Soni reads it as that line, "Like damp clouds, widows deaden the light of the sun," makes one think of suttee.