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Sleka
Bottom line: Sleka can be compared to free verse in some ways, and ancient slokas in other ways..Sleka is a generic name for associative, salient poetry, and preferably such teaching poetry too. It consists of fragmented key notes and key phrases put together. 'Associative' here means "relating to association especially of ideas or images". It is by idea associations most persons learn and develop a mind of their own, the Buzan brothers show. They say that the more you educate people, the more unique mental networks of associations they get. [Mmb 64-66]. There may be a little added to the keys too, in between them. Such additional words are for "glueing" the key words and phrases, or for clarifying parts, or modifications as seem fit. Glue may be added to assorted, more or less stripped elements, in other words.
LADEN, INTRINSIC USE. The sleka looks like a Sanskrit sloka, that sort of stanza. The sloka is the chief verse form of the Sanskrit epics. Interestingly, ancient Sanskrit verse frequently uses modes of expressivity that go together and mark modernist poetry and free verse of our times. Both sleka and sloka with their very fluid metres lends themselves extremely well to improvisation. Our sleka can be compared to a new twig on an old stump, then.
The sleka is for taking the bull by its horns by being a quite free-standing knowledge poem that is made up of key points, fragments, and key phrases it is good for learning, if what the eminent psychologist Tony Buzan asserts about the value of focusing on key words and key phrases is all right. He tells we can access ten times more or better through key notes, and the instructive sleka consists of them. The sleka has a link to the Japanese ikebana (shoka) too, in that its key phrases are like arranged flower offerings to Buddha deep within.
In the simplest forms of the sleka, most ellipses may be shown just by by linebreaks. It is possible to draw still more out of it, though, through various structural designs. Both prose and poetry outputs are possible.
ELEMENTS OF LINKED, EUROPEAN HISTORY. Slekas take off through similar means as in modernist poetry, by more or less isolated fragments and irregular metrical designs, just as in free verse. Various components are put together and experimented on. In modernist poetry experiments paved the way for a stripped and refined use of language that allowed for brief and economical outputs, seemingly rootless or even freaked at first glance, and yet robust enough. As in modernism, there is room for such as satire and arguments, and incorporation of most elements in lyrics.
As in the Modernismo movement there may or may not be an emphasis on native themes and folklore. Slekas may also be seen to derive from main elements of free verse in that they pick up cadences of speech and image patterns and thinks less of putting elements into some regular metrical scheme. A steady, abstract rhythm is not needed; its rhythms are based on patterned elements in words, phrases, sentences, and maybe whole paragraphs. The typography tends to be experimental. The expressive take eliminates much artificiality and substitutes a flexible formal organization and perhaps a casual-looking tone. Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens all wrote some variety of free verse.
As with vers libre poets of France in the 1800s, where structural innovations paved the way for liberated phrases more than fixed number of syllables, the lengths of lines may vary and rhyme is optional. The term prose poems may come to mind, as with Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), known as a marvellous poet of elliptical style, a genius that made a considerable fortune, and one of the founding fathers of modernism.
Literature
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
Mmb: Buzan, Tony, with Barry Buzan. The Mind Map Book. Rev. ed. London: BBC Books, 1995.
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