A Poem Is a Fruit Essay (Critical Writing)

A poem is a fruit. It is a fruit of the tree that is the poet’s mind. Every poem, just like the fruit of a tree requires time to grow and ripen. Trees only bear fruit in a certain season. The writing of a poem too requires a certain frame of mind.

A tree must have two elements in order to bear fruit, one is water the other is the nutrients found in the soil. A poem too requires two elements in order to come forth; these two elements are the poets’ feelings and emotions on one hand and their intellect and reasoning on the other. The intellect and the emotions are two aspects of the minds functions. The intellectual aspect of the mind is concerned with knowing and finding out how things are, emotions are the sudden bursts of feeling and strong instinctive impressions that occur in a poets mind. Working in tandem with each other, these two aspects of the mind come together in forming a poem. If the poem is dry and lacks in emotion, then the intent of the poet would probably be better conveyed in prose, on the other hand a good poem needs to be clever and make a display of wit and wordplay, without the use of the intellect poets would have little to convey and no means to convey what they felt.

A poem is also like a fruit in the way it is received by listeners. A poem is capable of burying its listeners in great depth of visceral pleasure, like sinking your teeth in a ripe tomato. On the other hand a poem that conveys a poet’s sorrow may have the power to leave in the reader’s mouth the taste of the poet’s bitter tears.

There are many different species and varieties of fruit, each with its unique taste, aroma and texture. Even within the same variety of fruit, no two fruits are exactly the same. In the same way, poems have different texture of sound characterized by the use of assonance or alliteration or consonance or euphony and may differ in the use a specific metre or in the matter of rhyming. Each poem imparts a different taste, a different thought, idea or emotion. Like fruit the outside of a poem may be known and familiar but their insides always hold the element of surprise.

Doctors have known for centuries that fruit is good for you. Fruits contain nutrients that are essential for our bodies and are rich in fiber which helps us rid out bodies of toxic wastes. Poems are good for us too, they are food for the soul and they help us get express our anger our disappointments and our fear leaving us feeling much better emotionally.

Some poems are low-hanging fruit; you can grasp the intent and meaning behind the poem immediately upon hearing it, other poems are harder to grasp, their meanings obscure, the image the poet wishes to convey veiled or unclear. There is always a great satisfaction in finding out the meaning of those poems, it’s like you have climbed a tall tree and just picked the last fruit of the season.

What is a fruit’s importance to a tree? They’re vehicles for the dissemination of seeds, seeds enable plant species to perpetuate their existence. In the same way poems disperse seeds too, the seeds poems disperse are seeds of ideas. Poems plant the ideas of one person into the fertile soil of the mind of another person. Poems perpetuate the existence of thoughts and philosophies.