Kavita Ka Shahar : Ek Kavi Ki Notebook

The city in poetry may be very different, with a greater or lesser element of imagination, but its appearance is somewhat similar to the city outside. But constantly trying to compare my appearance to the real city is futile. Sometimes even poets fall into the trap of imagining a city in their poetry. They believe they can create the same city in their poetry with words. But the materials used to create both are different. Whenever a real city is transformed into words, its appearance is no longer the same as its real face. This is a reconstructed face of the city. This is the city of poetry. But inhabiting or creating me is no easy task. To create my buildings, roads, streets, rivers, and lakes, even a poet needs countless words, sentences, images, symbols, rhymes, rhythms, myths, stories, and imaginations. The poets labor is in no way less than that of an architect or a city designer. My history is as old as the history of human urbanization. If this is not taken as conceit, I sometimes feel that I may have existed even before the first human-built city. Just as in a city something is always being added and something is always being destroyed, similarly something is constantly changing within me. The city of ancient poetry and the city of todays poetry are not the same. Like modern cities, I too have crowds, noise, and fast pace, familiar and unfamiliar faces. After all, I too am a city, and how can I escape the crowds and noise? So come, let me take you from the crowds and noise of the real city to the crowds and noise of the city of poetry.