When I was a child, I liked poetry; especially poetry with strong rhyme and meter. I remember the many times I checked out Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends from the school library. I also remember checking out another volume of poetry for children titled It Doesn't Always Have to Rhyme; I tried, but never could bring myself to enjoy the poetry in that book.
I can't say that junior high or high school exposed me to much poetry (a comment which threatens to get me started on a rant about education). Certainly we never memorized or recited poetry; we seldom even read it aloud. I remember reading Beowulf, of course, but it was a prose translation. Actual verse that I recall from school includes a modern english version of Canterbury Tales, some Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Kubla Khan and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Poe's The Raven, and Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. There were, perhaps, a few more, but I don't remember them. I enjoyed all the poetry I listed, here (which is why I remember them), but much prefered prose. At the time, I was reading fantasy and science fiction novels at a prodigious rate, and didn't consider poetry pleasurable reading.
In college I was exposed to a bit more poetry. It me annoyed that much of it was the same material covered in high school, with the addition of free verse and a variety of politically-correct and howling-hippie twaddle. Even some of that wasn't completely without merit, but much of it seemed onanism through a pen, and it colored my perception of free verse and modern poetry; in general, I didn't like it.
I did not develop a real appreciation of poetry until much later. In kindergarten, my son attended Northwoods Catholic School, where he was required to memorize a poem of at least twelve lines. We chose Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song. That inspired me to read more Longfellow, whose poetry appealed to me since it had rhyme and meter, but was not childish. From there, I moved on to other poets, including Robert Frost, Homer, Rudyard Kipling, Robinson Jeffers, and Dana Gioia. I took it upon myself to learn more about poetry; in doing so, I increased my enjoyment of reading poetry, and I expanded my horizons into forms that I had not enjoyed, in the past. I also discovered how much better poetry is when read aloud.
My present opinion on poetry can be summed up by saying that I receive the most enjoyment from poems with some structure. That doesn't mean that I dismiss free verse, but rather that I listen for the music in a poem. Good free verse may not adhere to a traditional structure, but that doesn't mean that free verse lacks structure; well-crafted free verse will have its own rhythms and harmonies which may not be as obvious as those in traditional forms. In my opinion, poems should be primarily judged on how they sound, which means you need to recite them aloud. Part of the pleasure of poetry is forming the words, breathing life into them, and hearing the vibrations that roll out from your mouth and lips. A poem is a physical thing: music composed with words instead of notes. Shakespeare's plays are best appreciated not when they're read, but when you see them at the theatre. Beethoven's symphonies are best appreciated not by looking at the score, but by hearing them performed, and feeling the air move around you. Likewise, a poem is best appreciated when it is spoken and heard; speaking the words invokes the magic.
Unfortunately, a great deal of modern poetry in open forms (i.e. free verse) fails to emphasize the verbal. Instead, some poets attempt visual tricks using random or funky enjambment, capitalization schemes, et cetera. That's fine, of course, but visual tricks should be spice added to the dish, rather than a main ingredient; the focus should not be how a poem looks on the page, but rather on how it sounds when read. To that end, poets can use enjambment, punctuation, and white space to influence how a poem reads, but the intent should be to influence the sound of them poem, more than the look of it. A great deal of free verse fails to consider the concept of poetic "music" at all, and suffers for that lack, in my opinion.
As a final comment, I recommend Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture to anyone interested in poetry.
So where is my poetry? I confess to having written some, but I haven't posted it on the web. You can read a few of my poems in the Spring 2006 or Summer 2006 issues of Hereditas Magazine. If you're really, really interested, send me an email, and I'll subject you to some of my unpublished verse.
I love Kipling's humor. His poems are often very funny. My college professor would not have appreciated this one, which raises its stock in my eyes that much higher.
More lighthearted verse, this time in praise of beer, as only Belloc can do it.
Yummmmm....pie...
This is my favorite free verse poem. I didn't appreciate this poem on the first read, but it has grown on me, and now I find myself reading it, often; there are numerous phrases, images, and rhythms that I find irresistible.
Lewis had a classical education, and he tends to insert Latin or Greek into his writing, which can be annoying if you don't have much Latin or Greek. (For me, the Greek is especially annoying, because not only is it Greek, but he uses the Greek alphabet rather than a roman transliteration.) He also tends to make references that you may or may not catch.
The references to Greek and Norse myth are straightforward and well-known, so I won't comment on those. As best as I can tell, the Latin in this poem means "[the mother] watched over the home, she made the wool." I may have the case or tense wrong, but that seems to be the gist of it. I am unsure who Leavis and Lord Russell were, but Leavis was probably F.R. Leavis, and Lord Russell may be referring to Bertrand Russell. The "palaestra" is a gymnasium. "Aidos" is self-respect or honor. "Sophrosune" is discussed in Plato's dialogues; it refers to the virtue of knowing oneself and being humble and content with one's place and destiny. "Vichy water" refers to Régime de Vichy. In my opinion, "Your goddess History/your goddess Fortune" refers to The Goddess of Fortune, an artwork by William Blake. In it, Blake depicts two scenes from Dante's The Divine Comedy, but the primary focus is the goddess, Fortuna, who we look down on through a hole in a slab; just above the figure Blake inscribed: "The hole of a Shithouse / The Goddess Fortune is the devils Servant ready to Kiss any ones Arse." Ass-kissing goes along with the reference to Vichy France quite nicely, and emphasizes the contrast with the pagans who were willing to stand up and die for their beliefs, even in the face of certain doom. My brother-in-law pointed out that "History" may also be a reference to Marx, beloved of many modern intellectuals.
The poem makes me laugh; how can you not love a poem that let's you say things like "Know your betters and crouch, dogs!" This is definitely one you should try reciting aloud.
This is good example of a poem which makes a statement that I don't agree with, and yet I still like it; there are many poems that fall into that particular category, especially in the modern era. The choice of words, the images, and even the dark feel all appeal to me.
That is one of the best-known impressionist poems (the red wheelbarrow is another one). My college professor was much enamored of William Carlos Williams; I never saw the attraction. However, consider the following free verse poem, a biting satire which never fails to make me smile.
Ha ha ha! I love it!
Usually when one thinks of poetry in the Bible, the Psalms spring to mind. However, there is a great deal of beautiful poetic imagery in the other books as well. Paul, especially, writes poetically. The above passage combines lines from the King James Version (e.g. "through a glass, darkly) and the Revised Standard Version (most of the rest).
My mother introduced this poem to me when she printed a copy of it out for my son, Caelen.
I have always enjoyed the pulp genre of "weird tales" written by authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. I knew that Lovecraft had dabbled in poetry, but I was unaware of the large body of poetic work that Smith produced. Reviews of Smith's work mentioned that he favored metered poetry and fantastic, cosmic themes, so I bought a collection of his poetry, The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith from Hippocampus Press. When the collection arrived in the mail, I enthusiastically dove in, but found immediate disappointment. Clark's poetry is metered, but most of it struck me as pretentious, wordy, and over-wrought. One of the first words that leapt to mind was "juvenile;" the poems sounded like the work of an intelligent, angst-ridden teen sitting in a dark room. (In fact, I later read the introduction and discovered that some of the included work was, in fact, written by Clark when he was a teen.)
Overall, I still have not warmed to Clark as a poet, but there are a few poems in the collection which grabbed me, and which I find myself going back to. Canticle is one of those poems that I return to; when that happens, there is no denying that I like the poem. There are several reasons I think this poem grabs me more than most of Clark's work. For one, the poem speaks about people, and gives me something to relate to. In his more tedious lyrics which pile one cosmic imagery on top of another, again and again and again, there is little to relate to. For another, the meter is pleasant, and the words are esoteric and unusual enough that they add spice to the recitation without being so obscure that you don't know what the poem is saying. I also find the use of necromancy as a symbol for digging into a lover's past very apropos. Lastly, I'm quite taken with his lovely little couplet: "Leave in silence, long unsaid, all the words that wake the dead." Apparently he liked it, too, since he used it as a refrain.
I first ran across this poem when Haldeman quoted a portion of it in his novel, The Forever War. (More than once, I've read a reference to a famous poem in a novel and only discovered the complete poem years later; I had the same experience with Eliot's The Waste Land, for example.) John Derbyshire, a writer and poetry fan, has a reading of this poem on his homepage. I like Mr. Derbyshire's taste in poetry, and he apparently feels the same way I do about the verbal nature of poems, because he gone to some pains to record actual readings of poems he likes. I should follow his example.