Summary of the poem All-Pervading Poetry by Bal Krishna Sama - LearnNote

All-Pervading Poetry, translated by Michael Hutt, is a poem on poetry and it makes a strong case for the ubiquity (सर्वव्यापीता) of poetry.

All-Pervading Poetry by Bal Krishna Sama [summary]

The poem "All-Pervading Poetry" is composed by Natya Siromani Bal Krishna Sama. In the poem, Sama discusses how an individual finds subject matter to write poetry. He says that a person should elevate his/her way of perceiving things around him to be capable of composing a poem. He adds that to write a poem, a person should mix his feelings, emotions, imagination with the natural surroundings.

Since nature is everywhere, subject matter for poetry can be found everywhere. So, poetry is all-Pervading (सर्वव्यापी). It is just the ability of an individual to discover the idea to write a poem. Looking at the objects through plain eyes never helps to generate (सिर्जना गर्नु) a poem. An empowering feeling and emotion are required to find poetry in the objects around us.

A holy man once wandered around the streams, hills, pastures (चरनहरू), forests, bushes, etc to find poetry. But he couldn't find any poetry. He thought that it wasn't the season for poetry. As he was returning, he met an aesthete (सौन्दर्यवादी). The aesthete made him realize how he could find all pervading poetry.

The aesthete said to use his heart (not mind) sympathetically to search poems in the objects around him. The aesthete advised the holy man not to look at things through prosaic eyes (the eyes that look for fact). Bringing such emotion and feeling help an individual see tree melting like resin, greenfield dissolving into lakes, the sky transforming into the Ganga river, flowers changing into honey, and stars look like droplets of water. This is the way to find life in lifeless objects. And this could be the subject matter to write great poems.