WELCOME
TO
OUR POETRY ARCHIVE
“In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode. The reading of a poem, a poetry reading, is not a spectacle, nor can it be passively received. It’s an exchange of electrical currents through language—“
--- Adrienne Rich,
Recently someone asked me what is the
purpose of writing a poem and why should one go on reading the same when poetry
has nothing to do in our everyday life struggle! Yes one can say that easily,
especially in today’s world of war and politics, terrorism and consumerism. We
have only one life to live. And in this tumultuous political environment world
over; what can we expect from poetry itself? Does it solve any problem? Can it
give us shelter from the war zone? Or could it be possible one day to make a
better world to live in through poetry among writers and readers? Frankly
speaking I have no clear-cut answers to these vital questions and doubts, as I
myself is not sure about the power of writing against the swords and missiles
of human greed to achieve power and appropriate the wealth of the world. Yet I
can only try to believe in the inherent morality of the common people, in the
deep conscience of their basic instinct, in the depth of their strength to
comprehend the pain of our times. These features are not so common in the
general public in spite of their education and living standards. Yet one can
only hope to instigate their inherent power to bring these features alive! Now
we come to the eternal question: how can you instigate people to bring out
their inherent potential to feel the heat of the pain of their time? Yes! One
can do that through dialogue and direct communication. Not as a political
battle, but through the communication of souls, ideas, feelings or of sympathy.
I hope now the readers have got the clue.
Yes, this ‘Communication of Sympathy’ is the purview of ‘Art of Poetry’,
‘Purpose of Poetry’, and ‘Destination of poetry’. Writers and readers of poetry
can build up a network of empathy which can eventually instigate our inherent
potential to comprehend our surroundings and the pain of the present time in its
totality. Yes, poetry has this power. It has that inbuilt strength which can
transform us from passive mode to the active one. This is the real purpose of
poetry both for the poet and her readers. If we go further, if we can analyze
this purpose of poetry, we can realize that through this process, the ‘I’ of
the poet can become the ‘we’ of the readers who can feel that ‘communication of
sympathy’ in the very fiber of their souls. Thus the individual self can be
transformed into the universal self. Only then that universal self can answer
the problems of our time.
It is with this inherent belief we had
started Our Poetry Archive. We are constantly working to develop that
‘communication of sympathy’ among various cultures and traditions bringing in
the diverse heritages of world literary fraternity into this monthly poetry
journal. Keeping all these in our mind-vision we had taken this project to
address poetical traditions of different Continents at a time in single
volumes. With this particular edition of ‘Asian Special’ we have completed this
project. We are glad to present fifty one poets and near about two hundred
poems with Asian flavors. We hope that our readers will enjoy this edition as
well like the previous continental specials. Readers will also find an engaging
conversation with ‘Poet of The Month’, Caroline Nazareno, supervised by
‘Poetess Deborah Brooks Langford’ and Poetess ‘Stacia Lynn Reynolds’ for OPA.
Those who would like to participate in our
upcoming editions, please send at least three poems and a profile picture,
along with your explicit permission for publication in OPA well before the 21st
of every month. You can also add one short Biography written in the 3rd
person narrative along with the submission. With this note I would like to
invite you all to this collection of poems of the Asian Poets. I would also
like to convey our gratitude to all the poets who have participated in this
number with their literary brilliance, on behalf of the entire editorial desk
of OPA.
From The
Editorial Desk
OPA
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WORLDWIDE WRITERS’ WEB
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