【摘要】诗歌是一种语词凝练、结构跳跃、富有节奏和韵律、高度集中地反映生活和表达思想感情的文学体裁。本文着重语词、内涵等方面分析诗歌的特点，使读者对诗歌的概念和基本特征有一个宏观认识。
【关键词】诗歌;定义
Definition of Poetry
Robert Pinsky once said: “Poetry…is an ancient art or technology: older than the computer, older than print, older than writing and indeed, though some may find this surprising, much older than prose. I presume that the technology of poetry, using the human body as its medium, evolved for specific uses; to hold things in memory, both within and beyond the individual life span; to achieve intensity and sensuous appeal; to express feelings and ideas rapidly and memorably; to share those feelings and ideas with companions, and also with the dead and with those to come after us.”
Poetry is one of the most ancient literary forms. It appeared thousands of years ago in the world as a form of literature. In China, there is Book of Poetry; In Greek, there is Homer Epic. Poetry is one of the earliest literary forms in ancient India, Egypt and Rome. In Britain, the earliest epic is Beowulf written in Anglo-Saxon period. Ever since then, people in all works of life, especially those educated, sensitive men, care about poems. Simple poems even can interest children, because poetry can bring pleasant sensation to them. People regard the poetry as the main thing of individual life. Poetry also has its special value to our spiritual life. It plays a very important role in our life. It cares all kinds of experiences; no matter this experience is happy or unhappy, special or ordinary, noble or humble, realistic or imaginative. In poetry, this kind of experiences, even the unfortunate ones, can become objects for people’s appreciation. Although such experiences cannot bring pleasant sensation in real life, they can enjoy the readers with the form of poetry. Thus, poetry gives us vitality and enjoyment. Just as William Wordsworth once said: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."(from Preface to Lyrical Ballads). Through reading poetry, we may understand more deeply about human’s feelings and furthermore about life itself.
Poetry uses a kind of condensed language to show life or feelings, or some other things. In this point, poetry is quite different from prose and novels, so understanding poetry is much more difficult than understanding prose and novels. I can say poetry is the art of literature, using fewest words to express utmost meanings. Poetry is the mirror of our life. No matter which nation it is, once opening its poems, we may find poems recorded every rising and declining of historical period of each nation. Reading poetry, we can know history, politics, economy, reform etc of different countries in various periods. The poetic history is also the nation’s development process. While expressing ideas or feelings or some other meanings, poets often depend on some literary techniques, such as meter, natural cadences, rhyme or metaphor etc. Thus, poetry can express profound meanings in a disguised way.
Poetry is also the philosophy of life. Many sentences of poems become mottos, which leave lasting reputation in the whole world. It has even become the legacy of all human beings. For example, in Shelley’s Ode to The West, there is a famous sentence: “…Oh, wind, If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” This famous saying has encouraged many people in the world. When they face difficulties, or they are in miserable time, they will think of it as encouragement to lighten their forward way. In this way, we can say that the poem is the important legacy of all human beings.
The following part is an example to see what the real poem is. After analyzing this poem, we may have a clear understanding about the definition of the poem. Here is a poem:
The Faithful Swallow
—— by Thomas Hardy
When summer shone
Its sweetest on
An August day,
“Here evermore,”
I said, “I’ll stay;
Not go away
To another shore
As fickle they!”
December came:
“Twas not the same!”
I did not know
Fidelity
Would serve me so.
Frost, hunger, snow
And now, ah me,
Too late to go!
This poem contains only a few words. It is about a swallow which did not migrate with the other birds, and is now suffering in despair in the cold winter. Some of the words, such as “faithful”, “fickle” and “fidelity”, may remind you of the way we talk about love and marriage. In fact, the poem is about people in love, and uses the swallow as an image. The poem has two stanzas, and there is a gap between them. The first section shows that the summer fidelity seems right and good, and the second section shows that fidelity has brought suffering and despair when winter comes. Here we can see that the different sections of a poem always relate to each other. In this poem, the first section is about summer and hope; the second section is about winter and despair. So the two sections of this poem contrast with each other. They are set in opposite seasons, and express opposite feelings about fidelity. Through rereading the poem, I found more details fit into the contrast structure: on the one side summer “shone” its “sweetest” in “August”; on the other side, “December” was “frost, hunger, snow”. Contempt for other swallows in summer changes to envy them in winter. The season, emotions and opinions are all part of the basic contrast which gives shape to the poem.
Based on what we have talked above, we may find the theme of this poem, which is also the writer’s purpose. “The Faithful Swallow” is about people’s hopes and disappointments, and expresses the contrast between them. Hardy contrasts the bright idealistic hopes people have when they are young with the misery and despair they come to in the end. The sudden opposition between the two stanzas adds to the effect of the poem, because it expresses how hope is crushed by cruel experience, very starkly and suddenly. In real life Hardy may have learned the misery of disappointment over many years of slow change as he grew older. In the poem the sharp contrast between the two stanzas heightens the painfulness of disappointment by making it seem to happen in a moment.
Usually speaking, the swallow is quite an ordinary bird in our mind. But in this poem the author endows the swallow some other meanings. We can see it clearly even from the title “The Faithful Swallow”. Then after reading and analyzing this poem, the reader may think carefully whether to be faithful is on earth good or not. “To be faithful” leads the poor swallow into the misery. The same things often happen in our real life. Sometimes we do something faithfully and meet trouble. Thus we can see that poetry can generate our imagination. We may think more about what the life is, and what kind of attitude we should have toward life. This is the basic function of poetry—-to educate people, and enrich their life experience.
Understanding poetry relies on treating poems as crises from unwritten stories, so we may find the elements which together make up the experience the poem conveys. However, in some poetry, the vital elements are expressed in images rather than direct language. Then we must rereading the poem and find what the image represents. Remember: Poets do not make their experiences live in characters or a story; poetry explains its meaning in any pattern of words which evokes a feeling and communicates the poet’s complex idea. It is necessary to be flexible, therefore, in approaching poems.
From what we have discussed above, we can see that every word, every sentence of poem, must reach its utmost intensity. That is to say, it must be different from common language in expressing ideas. Poets should use source materials as much as possible offered by the language itself, and then based on some literary techniques such as association, imagination, simile, metaphor, contrast, comparison, rhyme, sarcastic, etc as well as some life experience to express the underlying meanings. The successful poems have no extra word. The good poem is just like a tree, which forms its own structure and organizes by itself. The good poem is also an organism, in which every part must serve a useful purpose and every part must cooperate with one another to show the inner life of the poem. As for the readers, while we are reading poems, we are enjoying a process of appreciation. We are appreciating not only the happiness, but also the bitterness of poems. Samuel Johnson once said: "The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing." (from Preface to Shakespeare)
In my opinion, poetry is a composition designed to convey a vivid and imaginative sense of experience, characterized by the use of condensed language, as well as literary techniques. Poetry is the most outstanding representative of people’s life, so reading poems is also the process of understanding the profound meanings of our life.