13 May 2011

Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love

Not super happy with blogger, aren't we all? I don't think that sentence made sense. Whatevs, I'm reposting:


So I've learned more about poetry the past few months than I have since my introduction to Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and Langston Hughes by Mr. Hill six years ago. Reasons for this being 1) my first literature class since ENGL 292 at BYU, 2) my brief employment at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, and 3) my friend Calvin, recent acquirer of an MFA in creative writing, emphasis in poetry.

I've always been drawn to it, mostly because of the uncles and my own strong sense of rhyme and meter, but I don't feel like I really know that much. Being surrounded in that literature class by people who understood poetry far better than I was a little intimidating and also kind of frustrating. I know when I like something but I'm not entirely sure why, and I am unable to explain things in terms of form because I have never learned the forms or structure, aside from Shakespearian sonnets and Dr. Seuss-like stories.

A poem was read in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, titled "The Lanyard." I'd heard it before, and loved it before, but this time I came home and looked it up myself. It was a beautiful poem to read on Mother's Day. It led me to continue perusing Billy Collins's poetry, and I really like him. I love Robert Frost for his beautiful imagery and strong affinity to nature; I feel similar when I read Billy Collins. He knows how to use the language to create images in your mind, and from the little bit I read, he writes about real life.

Maybe that's what I want my poetry to be. I don't always love the Romantics (although Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is amazing), but I love poets who feel real.


And this just felt like me.

2 comments:

  1. Oh! I really liked the Lanyard poem...

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  2. Are the deleted posts seriously never going to come back?? There isn't even a draft of my bustle post!

    ReplyDelete