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The poets selected for Symphonies reveal vigor of their imaginative power, which enables them to create things quite new, a magnificent world of beauty and ideas for the enlightenment and delight of the readers. According to Aristotle, poetry is an art of imitation. No doubt, it is an art of imitation, but it does have a noble mission. Poetry alone inspires us to virtue and noble action. It is superior to the "dry bones" of history and abstract precepts of philosophy. "Poetry doth not only show the way, but gives so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it"(Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology For Poetry).

Further, it should be pointed out that literature is always influenced by the impact of war and social changes. In the Anglo-Saxon poetry (450-1050), we notice the romantic attitude towards war and the glorification of warriors; on the other hand, the Soldier Poets in England (1914-18) like Wilfred Owen, Sassoon, Herbert Read, Rossenberg and Herbert Read revealed the naked brutality and barbarism of the actual fighting in the trenches. Symphonies too features poems describing spiritual exhaustion, a "destructive urge", and a new kind of aesthetic experience. In poetry these poets found an answer to an unfortunate crisis caused by the violent and turbulent world, a helpless witness to the September 11 terrorist attack, the Gulf and Iraq war.

Horace (65 B.C. - 8 B.C.) aptly commented:" Let your theme be what it may, provided it be simple and uniform; choose a theme suited to your powers, ye authors." The theme of the poems selected for Symphonies reveals the impact of Two World Wars, Iraq war, and the Pound-Eliot tradition. Several poets pursue joy, eschewing sadness and penetrating below life's surfaces. Several poets in Symphonies remind us of English Metaphysical poetry and French symbolists. They are also influenced by the highly rich American poetry of the 20th  century, including poets like Olson, Duncan, Creeley; 'San Fransisco Renaissance' poets Jack Spicer, Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch; 'Beat' poets Ginsberg, Gregory Corso; 'New York Poets' Frank O' Hara, Barbara Guest. O'Hara took an intense, but limited view when he remarked that only Whitman, Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.

Here is visible a rich gallery of poets characterized by majesty, extraordinary witchery of music, the vivid pictorial quality of imagination, and heart-appealing harmonies of verse. The poets never display artistic monotony, and they are marked by true intensity of sincere feeling and music of words. Several poets included in Symphonies enact "inner reality which results in self-realization or self-recognition."

Symphonies 

Edited By: Dr. Santosh Kumar
Binding: Paperback (pp: 280)
ISBN: 81-901366-3-1
Availability: In Stock (Ships within 1 to 2 days) Publisher: Cyberwit.net, India
Pub. Date: 2003 Condition: New

Description: The poems included in Symphonies will surely deepen and purify our normal existence. In several poets, we notice a decided opposition between the artist and society. Symphonies shows that the poets have a greater knowledge of life and a more comprehensive soul than a common person. Besides, by a deft use of their power of imagination, the poets are able to unravel the mystery of life, and to reveal uncommonness in the ordinary things of life. The imagery in the poems is clear and delicate. Several poems in Symphonies exalt and widen the spiritual vision, and the aim of such poets seems "to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous." On the contrary, some of the poets in Symphonies concentrate on the ugliness, pain and violent terrorism in the new millennium. You can see the poet's "hurts were spinal." The Symphonies poets are at their best as literary artist. Many poets in Symphonies seem to follow the advice of T. E. Hulme (1888-1917): "Poetry should restrict itself to the world perceived by the senses, and to the presentation of its themes in a succession of concise, clearly visualized, concrete images accurate in detail and precise in significance." The conscious and deliberate pursuit of hard and dry images and 'vers libre' at times results in obscurity, and this has been avoided by the selected poets of Symphonies.

Rebecca Guile Hudson

THE GREAT PRETENSE

We're waging a war
against violence,

& we're heavily armed
for peace

Dear Mother Nature's
dead set on killing us

while our fears and our terrors
increase

We live with a terror of dying
yet don't hesitate to slaughter in strife,
and we justify this by denying
that one life is equal to all life

FROM ANOTHER PLANET

Imagine for a moment
That you're from another planet
And have never, ever seen
A cup before

Or seen a chair or television,
Telephone or long division,
The bombs we build
With such precision

Then how could you begin to know
What all these things are for?

If you'd never seen a letter,
An "a" or "u" or "y",
Then even this small poem
Your senses would defy

And we, with deep derision,
You're ignorance would decry,
Without ever, ever thinking
There might just 
Be reasons why
You don't know how to use these things,
Or the rules that we apply

To the daily tasks of living
While we pretend we do not die


Rebecca Guile Hudson from NM, USA says: "Communication of new perspectives and visions and ideas is the best way I know how to help bring about world mind-change and, therefore, real world peace."

Charmane Rae Kelley 

Published Words and Poems of Authors and Poets from Around theGlobe..an oasis for the joy of writing..