Entry #622736, added on 12-06-08 @ 7:25 am EST
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| The value of reading poetry | Entry #622736 |
Some thoughts about poetry and a few poems:
Poetry inspired me early on. A quirky only child, I spent a fair amount of time reading alone in my pale blue bedroom or in a wooden playhouse in my backyard. I wasn’t entirely antisocial, but found many of my best friends in a parallel universe of words occupying a small bookshelf in my closet. And while I never considered myself a poet, I composed silly limericks while the neighborhood kids played dodge ball.
I like to encourage everyone to make a habit of reading poetry. Reading a poem a day will change the way you look at your world, and if you happen to be a writer, it will enhance your own work. Start with accessible contemporary poets like Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, and David Whyte. They’re easy to digest — but soulful and satisfying.
~~ Cindy La Ferle, blogger ~~ http://www.laferle.com/?p=637
Poetry reflects on the quality of life, on us as we are in process on this earth, in our lives, in our relationships, in our communities.
~~ Adrienne Rich, poet
Whoever lives for poetry must read everything. How often has the light of a new idea sprung for me from a simple brochure! When one allows himself to be animated by new images, he discovers iridescence in the images of old books. Poetic ages unite in a living memory. The new age awakens the old. The old age comes to live again in the new. Poetry is never as unified as when it diversifies.
~~Gaston Bachelard ~~ French philosopher
Even beginning readers can know if a poem appeals to them...because it enables them to see things in ways they've never seen before. For example: since I read James Reeves' poem about the snail as a 'toppling caravan,' I've never been able to look at snails the same way... The poet's job, you see, is not to give us straight encyclopedic fact but to tell us something new or to tell something old in a new way--to give us fresh images.
~~Myra Cohn Livingston, poet
The Snail
by James Reeves
At sunset, when the night-dews fall,
Out of the ivy on the wall
With horns outstretched and pointed tail
Comes the grey and noiseless snail.
On ivy stems she clambers down,
Carrying her house of brown.
Safe in the dark, no greedy eye
Can her tender body spy,
While she herself, a hungry thief,
Searches out the freshest leaf.
She travels on as best she can
Like a toppling caravan.
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Fueled
by Marcie Hans
Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire---
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky---
and everybody cheered.
Fueled
only by a thought from God---
the seedling
urged its way
through the thickness of black---
and as it pierced
the heavy ceiling of the soil---
and launched itself
up into outer space---
no
one
even
clapped.
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
~~Jean Cocteau, poet philosopher
The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
~~Jean Cocteau
Tread softly; listen to the whispers.
larryp
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