This Is Why People Who Write Poetry Experience Such Extreme Pain

“Everyone sees the violence of the swollen river. Few see the violence of the embankments that constrain it.”

Very often, people have a propensity to observe the anguish in poetry. The melancholy masqueraded by verses is discerned, however, nobody contemplates the anguish of the mind that produced those verses. This revelation is partially inexplicable, primarily because it is underestimated immensely.

The pain when your work is cut, altered, or eliminated.

The pain when your words are edited to an extent that they aren’t your own anymore.

The pain when you discover that maybe it will take a lifetime to find an audience for your art.

The pain when you realize the societal unacceptability towards poetry.

The pain when you question your own abilities.

The pain when you don’t desire the art you are privileged to possess, when you don’t yearn for the ‘gift’ you have received.

This is the utter frustration of being a poet, of being a writer.

It is the sheer agitation that courses through your veins, when you are compelled, to amend your capabilities to complement someone else’s incapability.

The helplessness of perceiving your work unintelligibly simplified.
It is the absence of artistic liberty.

People seldom comprehend the profound implications veiled beneath a line, or a verse.

Thoughtlessly eliminating it is a very simplistic, literalistic manner of apprehending art.

Forbye editing, there is a certain inarticulate emotion when you’re cognizant of the fact that few will realize, fewer will acknowledge the pain.

Scrutinizing my work being edited was similar to suffocation and suppression. In those testimonial moments, I ascertained the intimate connection between the artiste and the art.

Editing a piece of writing is not merely an extrinsic process. Writing is not an external object to a writer. Poetry is not paper and ink to a poet, it is a part of the poet’s being. And when this poetry is retracted or blatantly cut, it is similar to incising the poet’s essence. It is similar to contaminating art.

It is tearing a soul, shred by shred.

What is worse? It is the quieting helplessness, the necessitated silence. The lost battle because an ordinary individual will never understand the pain of being a poet.

But, in spite of the existence of these obstructions, poetry shall remain my deathless love.

The joy of sentiment,

The elation of comprehension,

The satisfaction of expression and,

The power of poetry, overshadow the sorrow.

I am truly grateful to be who I am.

To be a Poet.