Paradox, the Making of Poetry

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed account of paradox and how it makes a piece of work as a poem. Every one speaks language to communicate something to his fellow people; Poets speak differently and they communicate beautifully to the environment; it is totally different from the language of a common man; ‘What makes this difference’ is this paper’s theme. This paper deals with language of science and language of poetry in terms of denotation and connotation and thus explains how paradox creates poetry; Brooks says ‘Language of Paradox is language appropriate to poetry and poet speaks through paradoxes only.’ This paper delineates the paradoxes prevailing in Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge” and in Donne’s Canonization. Brooks quotes that Wordsworth sees the unanimated houses as animated since these houses in London were sleeping; Brooks sees the title Canonization itself is a paradox as it refers to the theme of religion, contrary to the actual theme of love. Such contrary ideas, this paper substantiates, are yoked together to create paradox and these paradoxes make poetry. This paper establishes the difference between the situational paradox and the rhetorical paradox. All poems will have both paradoxes and it stresses the beauty of any poem lies only on paradox. This paper throws light on the significance of paradox in poetry