TheMuseIsATeachernotATrickster

Poetry has been, more often than not, looked upon as an escape from Life. Much of Urdu and Persian poetry, romantic poetry of England and America and even Hindi court poetry is sensuous and erotic burning incense at the altar of wine and beauty. If the whole function of poetry were to inveigh or decoy the reader into forgetfulness, poets might as well be purveyors of drugs and soporofics. Poetry has a more positive function to perform. It is not an escape from life; it is an escape into life. The poet must give a vision of a better and happier world and exhort the reader to rebuild the existing world after the envisioned pattern. Plato was such a poet and created an imaginary Republic. Moore did the same job in his Utopia. Likewise Butler created Erewhon. The great poet looks far ahead into an El Dorado and fetches a golden apple for human beings to dream upon and relish. A divine discontent with the existing order is created and that discontent is the proper climate for a change. The Muse of poetry is thus a teacher, a trumpet that sings to battle. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.