Poetry in My Life

Poetry, one of the most ancient flowers on earth, has undergone innumerable definitions and analyses by people who try to understand its existence or rather the reason of its existence, as well as that of life. And like life, poetry has been attributed innumerable intentions and many explanations have been given for its secret role. It is connected to the divine, to the sky, it is seen as an expression of the world, and even as a “Creator”. 1/

Poets’ lives fall in front of me as drops of a sad rain, because rain is gray and drops are seldom bright. I’ve been always impressed by this contradiction between poetry’s messianic image that some people have and poets’ usually miserable and suffocation life.

Personally, I’m not interested in poetry definitions and theories, except as picturesque exercises in the emptiness. What I know is that poetry helped me live, serving it for half century now, almost exclusively. With this I don’t mean that I plunge into poetry and forget the poisonous reality. What I mean is that poetry puts you on a path that leads directly to the source of things. There, where passion begins before becoming love for a particular person, where awe before the unknown that circles life begins, before becoming hostility and personal dislike. A foreboding about a disaster that you feel approaching is translated into “a holy emotions touching your spirit and body”. 2/ Or the world is revealed to you, maintaining at the same time its multiple meanings… Yes, I owe a lot of magic things to poetry. There, suddenly, I see clearly, for example, how few are finally the objectively immutable elements. Life and death, perhaps… The same object or event under a different light, in a different moment, has a different value, has other consequences, and has different meanings.

Poetry has helped me, and still helps me, live, not because I believe that what I do will stay – “do not stoop to such hopes” 3/ – nor because I feel destined to serve a holy cause. It is rather because even when poetry abandons me and I feel my side naked shivering in the wind, I know it is there, somewhere around. Besides, now I know, poetry has taught me how to translate the end of life into love for life.

Athens 24.03.2002

1) In Greek the word for “Poetry”is “Poiisii”, derived from the ancient Greek verb “Poio”, which means “Create”.

2) From C. Kavafis’ poem “Ithaca”.

3) From C. Kavafis’ “God forsakes Anthony”.