Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Form and Message of Poetry
One of the fundamental features of poetry is the unity of the 'inner and outer' the 
sensual 'and intellectual' or the interdependence of sound and meaning. 'Form' embraces and 
penetrates the "message" in a way that constitutes a deeper and more substantial meaning. 
The poetic dimension is just that dramatically unified meaning which’s coterminous with 
form. The unity of meaning and form is most transparent in verse: the metrical structure of 
verse integrates all the elements of a poem into a unified whole, where every part contributes 
to the meaning of the whole, and the whole clarifies the meaning of the parts. Every line or 
stanza, of a poem carries its own meaning, but leads inevitably to the meaning of another line 
or stanza with which it forms a higher meaning. The idea that 'poetry is made up of beautiful 
details', and that no single part can be altered or removed without destroying the whole 
therefore is as pertinent as the idea that no detail has a value in and by itself, and that the 
meaning of a poem is only the meaning of the whole.
The close interrelation between meaning and form compels us, that meaning and form 
are two complementary aspects of any poetic work. The 'symmetry between form and 
content' or ‘parallelism of expression' coupled with 'parallelism of thought’ makes poetry 
into a code of its own kind, in which the formal elements of language, such as the selection 
and arrangement of sound, the length of a sentence, and work order all contribute to the 
meaning of the whole and acquire particular semantic weight. Poetry explores and tests to the 
hilt the potentialities of language and represents the maximal utilization of the linguistic code.
The interrelation between form and meaning is also apparent in the interplay between 
thematic structure arid the use of metrical forms. Thus narrative fiction is generally less prone 
to put into the form of verse than lyrical poetry which is almost always versified. As has been 
repeatedly confirmed by poets, meter itself has the power to evoke the appropriate theme, and 
the selection of certain themes goes hand in hand with the choice of meter.
The modern concern with form at the expense of meaning has distributed modem 
poetics form the study of the function of form, and more broadly: from the study of the very 
function of poetry. The definition of poetry as 'the emphasis on the message', and the 
inclination to see poetry as purposeless activity as opposed to the linear progression of prose 
has tended to skirt the central issue of its function: the meaning of the poetic message as 
structured form. For even verse, the most pervasive and systematic of all formal devices, is 
not merely a structure of unfolding parallelisms of sound and meaning, but a system in which 
the parallelisms of form serve to create parallelisms of meaning.