Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

                                                                                                               Robert Frost

 

  

A much-loved form of literature is poetry. That is why, in addition to writing poetry, I also write prose but in poetic form. Literature has known different literary movements worldwide, different -isms. What's interesting is that many of those movements were, over and over again, in response to the previous movement(s). There was neoclassicism where everything was based on reason and there was no room for feelings. This is exactly what predominates in the literary movement that followed it in the first half of the 19th century, which is the period of Romanticism.

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Romanticism was a very important literary movement in worldwide literature that was born almost simultaneously in England and Germany and that passed through France, Spain and Italy. Some of the essential features of Romanticism were the return to the themes of the Middle Ages, requirement of artistic freedom, reassessment of nature (wild landscape), religious themes and of course the importance of feelings.

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Unlike neoclasism with its classical themes, here it was passion and instincts that counted, which were their only law of life. Depressed feelings predominated over happy feelings. Their style was one of expressing emotions. The neoclassers wrote for a minority, while the romantics wrote for a majority.

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What was important here were intimate feelings. Music played a very important role here. People like Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Felix Mendelssohn were very popular and famous. In the field of literature, the French writer Victor Hugo, the Englishmen William Blake and Lord Byron and the Spaniards José de Espronceda and José Zorrilla set the tone.

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After Romanticism, that is in the second half of the 19th century, there was Realism that was again a reaction against the previous movements. Realists rebelled against the absurd ideas of the Romantics and focused almost exclusively on everyday problems. Their style was natural and sober. French realists included Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert. There were also some English realists such as Charles Dickens and Mary Ann Evans (better known by the pseudonym George Eliot), Lev Tolstói from Russia and Mark Twain from America.

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A literary movement that we see in our area, the Caribbean and Latin America, which started in 1888, is the movement Modernism which is a Spanish American movement and which is also a reaction against the Realism movement that preceded it. An important point of modernism is "beauty". Modernism's success is in his poetry. Rubén Darío is considered the most famous modernist there was. Modernists escape reality.

 

In the 20th century, also referred to as the century of war, you can see various literary innovations where political problems and typical customs of a country predominated. Imperialism prevailed.

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That is only a small part to illustrate that time and again in literature there were literary movements and themes that contradicted each other. It's as if the authors, and more specifically the poets, tried to put themselves in one mold, but had to realize that they weren't quite happy with those styles.

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I've always loved poetry. Poetry is a very unique way of expression.

To me, all poetry are thoughts that are poured into a poetic form. Throughout history there have always been several new types of versification. But to me, a true poet shows his mastery not when he can only dominate the art of versification or when he can write difficult poems that no one can understand, but rather when he manages to convey the emotions he feels or the reader feels after reading his poem. So for me, poetry is thoughts that are turned into reality, through emotions captured by the receptor that can be the reader or the listener.

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I started writing rhymes when I was eight years old. When I was about 12 years old I started writing poems. To this day I have a lot of fun in this hobby. But like the neoclasists, I always wrote for a minority, which in my case consisted of only one person: me.

I even wrote a poem when I was fourteen years old called Just for me.

Next I want to share it with you:

 

When I’m sitting alone

and got nothing to do

I just pick up a pen

and begin to write something new.

 

Sometimes I have to think a lot

to write a poem or a song.

But most of the times

I just write something at once.

 

I just can’t explain

why I like to do this a lot.

I just pick up a pen

and after that I can’t stop.

 

My poems are very special.

For me they have something real.

And that is the intention.

They are written Just for me.

 

As I got older and started writing deeper poems and also because people encouraged me, I started thinking about publishing. I write a little about everything. In all areas and in all kinds of subjects. From perhaps the most insignificant to the most serious thing. My poems are versatile, intended for adolescents and adults, and you will find themes from all literary movements in them.

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I also really like to experiment when I write a poem, because I love language. That is why I have structured this book through many expressions. Each chapter deals with an expression. For example, the chapter entitled Ku mil amor [With much love] deals with different love poems on different levels. In Tanten tin bida tin speransa [While there is life, there is hope] you will find poems in a relaxed atmosphere, with themes that motivate you, or with a religious touch, or as the name indicates with a positive tone. Tempu lo mustra [Time will tell] deals with poems in which the time factor plays an important role. Only time can tell what fate will bring. In Kada planchi ta kue awa na su rais [Every plant gets water through its roots] you will find various poems about nature; be it trees or plants, or human nature where, as the saying goes, man wants to take into account himself, his land or his people. Rékentin Pas! [Nothing else to do!] Can be viewed as a chapter of mourning or lamentation as well as an expression of something that has come to an end.

 

Un boka bisa otro [Spread the word] is a beautiful chapter with short poems, rhymes, phrases in world-renowned styles with deep and thoughtful themes, that are also light and fun to entertain. Here you will find Japanese styles such as the famous Haiku, Senryu and Sedoka. There is also Naani, which is very famous in India, where poets living in Andhra Pradesh write about it in their Telugu language. Telugu is the third most widely used language in India, after Hindi and Bengali. Limerick, native to Ireland, is also included. There is also Cinquain, or American limerick, an innovation of a quintet by the poet Adelaide Crapsey. The comic verse Clerihew, created by the Englishman Edmund Clerihew Bentley at the age of 16 and very popular with teenagers, had to be included. There is aphorism, septolet and nonet. 

 

I have included this chapter in my book because for me the art of poetry covers a wide area and many subjects. Poetry should not be too serious, too heavy or too long. And since I myself am a person who loves to laugh and loves happy things, I added it. I think this chapter also reflects some of my character. This chapter is the product of my own inspiration and imagination. As a profession I can be a translator, but when it comes to writing poetry I have a lot of imagination and I don't copy or translate anything from another language. The fact that I am curious and always want to learn makes me experiment, but I always want to make my own work. And our "dushi" [lovely/dear] Papiamentu is a language rich enough to give us food for thought.

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After the Kolekshon di Poesia [Poetry Collection] comes the Kolekshon di Prosa Poétiko [Poetry Collection]. This is about the genre of poetic prose, where you can find a combination of prose and poetry. It is a genre that has not yet been decided on how to define it. On the one hand, it is said to be prose written poetically, where there are no pauses at the end of lines related to poems, no rhymes or verses, but paragraphs, sentences, and sentence fragments with descriptions of pictures and emotions. But it uses many poetic techniques such as consonance, assonance, metaphors, repetition and symbolism. On the other hand, it is said to be poetry written in a prosaic manner, emphasizing the narrative part, along with common poetic techniques such as fragmentation, compression, repetition and rhyme. In other words, in this genre there is a fine line between poetry and prose. But the fact is that both thoughts have a high poetic quality, so the train of thought often naturally leads to a revelation, a final thought or an image to leave with the reader.

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This is a very old genre. It is usually related to the writer Aloysius Bertrand, who is considered the father of this genre, as well as 19th century French Symbolist writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. From there, this form has quickly spread to other literary and innovative circles around the world, including poets such as Franz Kafka in Germany and Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz in Latin America. Each group of writers adapted the form and developed their own rules and limitations, thus expanding the definition of this poetic prose genre. Today this genre is still much loved for the fact that it offers freedom of structure and form and is written in an engaging way.

 

In the section Kolekshon di Prosa Poétiko [Poetic prose Collection] there is the chapter Bèrdat no sa pika lenga [The truth will not sting the tongue] where you can find poems like this, which are much longer. As I have illustrated, we can think of them as poetic prose, or some kind of story, which can also have its funny parts, or just entertain and sometimes even have a moral.

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I like puns, I like to use asonance, aliteration, figures of speech, etc. I have also made shape poetry, or visual poetry. I often use paired rhyme, embraced rhyme, crossed rhyme, or partial rhyme. In this poetry book I have also taken into account various existing poetry genres. Like love poems, such as Eksploshon amoroso [Love explosion] which is also a climax and Futuro amor [Future love]. Violeta [violet], is written from the male perspective. Baguèchi di amor [Magic wand of love] is semi-acrostic with shape and Kronometrahe [Timing] is an acrostic with shape.

 

In this way I hope to inspire young people so that, in addition to writing traditional poetry, they also experiment with writing the more modern forms of poetry and inspire them to write poetry at every opportunity. Poetry should not be viewed as boring or for adults only. Besides deeper poetry with syllable count, meter, rhythm that are strictly set, there is also beautiful poetry that can have their peculiar techniques, which the poet creates himself. Therefore, lately there have been many poets who are considering devoting more time to writing free poetry, which they often call free verse poetry or thoughts.

 

Soneto di olvido [Sonnet of oblivion] is an 11 syllable sonnet. Karusèl [Carrousel] and Filingrana [Filigree] are pantoums. We can consider Héroe nashonal [National hero] and Bahia di Santa Ana [St. Anna Bay] as heroic poems. Kurason ku Dios [Heart to God] starts with the metric styles such as trochee and iamb and ends with a cocktail of anapest, dactyl and amphibrach. In E wals di bida [Waltz of life] dactyl predominates. Riba pasarela internashonal [On the international catwalk] and Street legal are fables. Sha sha and Carpe diem are quaterns, while Un rosa [A rose] can be regarded as an elegy or regret. Chan ku Chan di Tantan Katan [Chan and Chan from Aunt Katan] is a kind of tongue twister. Kuenta di gai pilon [A misleading story] is full of sayings, phrases and proverbs. There are different odes and lyrics and of course the much loved rhythmic poetry like Galein and Yu di tera [Earthling]. Some poems are accompanied by a photo that illustrates an aspect mentioned in the poem and in some cases with a bit of information from the image or object photographed.

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For those interested and especially for our teenagers, I have added an extensive vocabulary at the end. There I give the different meanings of the types of poetry that are perhaps less well known. The vocabulary has expanded not only because of the great amount of poetry in this book, but also because of the many words and phrases used by our elders in the past and which are now almost forgotten. It's about words and phrases that are often profound, educational or even funny, and are worth emphasizing these days. Putting these in a poetic guise will not only immortalize them, but it will also be an incentive to keep using them in our daily lives. In this way, we give honor and appreciation to our literary cultural heritage.

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I love to experiment. But above all I try to create my own style.

Enjoy this first collection of poetry and poetic prose.

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Cathleen Giterson :)