when you fell in love with poetry..

My curriculum in high school was "college-prep/technical as opposed to college-prep liberal arts" but we did have a bit of American Lit.

My introduction to poetry was by Poe as well, and I'm grateful that my English teacher could do the poem justice. No reading of "The Bells" has moved me as much as when I heard for the first time.

When I was just a kid of a boy, Mother Goose initiated a poetry love that included other pieces from our first reader at school. I enjoyed "This Is The House That Jack Built" and "Splish, Splash!" in that little book. And from a schoolmate I learned various examples of an artful form called the limerick. Eventually I came across Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Lear's "The Owl And The Pussycat." I thought all those were pretty darned cool.

Back then I heard a guy named Phil Harris recite "I Know An Old Lady (Who Swallowed A Fly)" and "The Thing" on radio. Both of these selections resonated with my immature sensibilities and later set me up to be a fan of Johnny Standley, Andy Griffith, and Stan Freburg. As an adolescent, I liked the mere poetry of a capella drinking songs along with many undocumented and now forgotten folk poems. Still later, Homer and Jethro, Allan Sherman, Sheb Woolley, and Alfred Matthew Yankovic created clever parodies of popular music hits, all of which my mind would associate with that earlier poetry.

Attracting me to serious writings in school days were Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and "Song Of Hiawatha," Thayer's "Casey At The Bat," Poe's "The Raven" and "The Bells," Whittier's "Maud Muller" and "Barbara Frietchie," and Noyes's "The Highwayman." Later I came to appreciate the creativities of Ogden Nash, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, Stephen Vincent Benet, Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, Theodor Seuss Geisel, and a good number of others. Most of their works I recall employed meter and rhyme from the venue better suited to my limited comprehension skills and capabilities of delight.

.

PH, good thread.

I hesitated to contribute because I'm embarrassed how little memory I still have. My childhood was in a continuous flux, as it seems, my whole life has been such. But I do recall my mother reading to me out of a book of childrens' rhymes and my two favorite still linger. One was about a calico cat and a gingham dog and another about a gumdrop tree. Of course, I've heard and read many classics and they've all contributed to my soul in one fashion or another. Poe is a standout as well as Dr. Seuss and Silverstein.
Hiawatha and many, many more. They are part of the layers and rings that comprise my inner being and I don't do them justice by forgetting. I envy people who have their memories so detailed and specific.

Being is poetry, every thought and action capable of resonating it's own clear note.

The first time was tenth grade, maybe -

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelly


But somehow I forgot between then and learning more. The second time, it stuck and I've consistently picked through all over and found poems I love.

when i was 6, i was stricken with a rare blood disease. this required a great deal of travel back and forth to hospitals and, later, doctor's offices.

for a while, i had to have blood extracted daily and the office i went to had the paper liner for the examination table. printed on this particular version were images of "winken, blinken and nod", "hey, diddle, diddle" and other iconic nursery rhymes.

i would find myself reciting these poems to myself as they jabbed my arm with needles and sucked out blood (or, later, pricked my finger with those wicked little blades and squeezed out the blood onto a microscope slide).

anyway, something about the combination of powerlessness, blood, the fear in my mother's eyes and the sing-songy, detached rhymes in my internal monologue made for a recipe i found irresistable.

in the years that followed, i found these qualities of sadness and mystery synthesized and crystallized into the words themselves in works like richard cory and poe's poems.

i'm not sure if that constitutes falling in love, but i'd say the die was pretty much cast by 4th grade.

Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum est at school, round about...oh, I dunno...the age of ten?

Coupled with a rerun of the Parkinson show in which Dame Maggie Smith read Betjeman's Death in Leamington aloud - in front of Betjeman himself!

I was 16 sitting in the library at Stevens High School in Rapid City, So.Dakota avoiding my classmates during the lunch hour. I'd had enough social rejection and sought solace in the quiet shelves as I always had when I came across this poem:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

--Robert Frost

His final words in another poem struck such a cord with me that I will forever think of myself as a part of this very philosophy:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken---Robert Frost

I have the entire poem printed and in a frame on my dresser to this day. It reminds me that on that day in the fall of 1974, I made a choice and I've never regretted it.

P.H.Delarran said:

so--what were your cut-to-the-bone poetry inspirations/influences??

Click to expand...

My fourth grade teacher - Jane Kelly - made each student recite a memorized poem every Friday for about half the school year.

That's when I began to enjoy poetry. In particular I remember
L'Envoi by Kipling.

I believe my love of poetry came directly from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. I loved the Fractured Fairy Tales, but my favorite part was Bullwinkle's recitations of poetry (Bullwinkle's Corner). When I later learned that he wasn't exactly accurate in those presentations, I was quite pleased to realize that I liked the "real" versions even better. At age 5 or 6 I was a member of the Dr. Suess book club (not sure if that was the actual name) and I received 2 or 3 books every month for a year. Surprisingly, I have a very low tolerance for made-up words, a trait I struggle to repress.

Later on, I bought a pair of panties that had the first stanza of "Daffodills" printed on the back side. I can't begin to explain how cool and cultured(?) I thought I was, when I was wearing a bit of Wordsworth on my ass!


How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson



I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

The more I think of it, the more I know is goes farther back than I cited. The long gap as a young adult was there, but when I was a child I remember being thrilled by Ogden Nash's, 'The Tale of Custard The Dragon' -

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

Strangly it was not poems but song lyrics that made me want to write poems. Writers like Hank Williams influenced me big time. For awhile I wanted to write songs but soon knew it would be poems or nothing. I come from a family of twelve children and most of us have written poems at one time or another. My long duel with the bottle held me back but even then those old songs kept me going.

P.H.Delarran said:

children's rhymes and country music... hmmm, gateway drugs to the hard stuff?

Click to expand...

Yes, once we were young and so vulnerable and look where it has taken us now. PH, thanks for this nice thread. The comments have been really interesting.

.

I hated poetry, from about 7th grade onward, my hatred growing year by year. One of the reasons was teachers trying to shove interpretations down our throats, or making us try to say, "This is what the poet meant." It made me sick, and I rejected poetry as a result.

In 1997 when Dad died, I cleaned out his house. Among the 2,100 books therein were some old books that belonged to Uncle Dave, my grandmother's uncle. Among them were several of the romantic poets and others such as Tennyson, Longfellow, Burns. Also therein I found an 1865 book of Charles Lamb's letters. I became fascinated with them. Reading Lamb led me to Coleridge; reading Coleridge led me to Wordsworth; reading Wordsworth led me to Tennyson and Southey and Keats, etc. I began to gain an appreciation, but the end was not yet.

In August 2001 I was laid up briefly with a heat attack scare (it wasn't one). During that time I read some poetry, then decided to take up a challenge a writer had given me to write a poem and submit it to a contest. So I tried it, and found I liked it. That 2001 poem is the anchor of my (unpublished) poetry book, and some think my best poem.

As coincidence would have it, I began writing that poem on August 31, 2001, exactly eight years ago today. So I guess this is the anniversary of my adult poetry writing "career."

I had always liked reading, and the teenage neighbor who used to watch me when I was nine or ten used to write poetry. I was so enamoured by her just sitting there, pouring her soul onto paper that I decided that I wanted to try out writing poems. My first poem, honestly, was a rip off of Robert Frosts "The Road Not Taken," which I'd just read a few days before in my sixth grade class. Ever since then I've had an affair with poetry that soon lead to fiction, and then eventually creative nonfiction. After that one poem though, I began to realize that poetry didn't just have to be something to do, but that it could be cathartic, and I could breathe life into it.

Sorry if it seems sentimental

Robert Frost and Leonard Cohen gave me my first love of poetry. I know nothing about poetry, just what I like.

As you can see in my signature, I have had a serious soft spot for "The Calf Path" by Sam Walter Foss since I was a child. I had an old text book that had it in there, and I would read it all the time.

In high school I got hooked on Edgar Allen Poe. and my appreciation for more complex poetry stemmed from there

Wayne K said:

I know nothing about poetry, just what I like.

Click to expand...

Me too. And I don't mostly feel guilty for that, because I try, and I read slowly. That's all the damned poet can ask, right?

... Dostoyevsky. He was into a poet named Nekrasov. Preluded one of his short stories with a stanza of his, even. So I figured if my idol had such reverence for poetry there must be something to the stuff. So I began reading from an anthology I acquired. Settled on Eliot first followed by Lowell. Then dipped back a bits to Byron and Collridge. (Hope I spelt that right.) By then I was hooked. Awesome medium of expression. Though I mostly write prose there's a lot of poetical nuances to my material, or so I like to think ;-)

When I was a little boy, if I lost an eyelash, Mum would pick it up and put it on the back of my hand. She'd cover it with her own hand, then ask me two questions:

1) "What goes up the chimney?" (answer.)

2) "Who's a great poet?" (answer.)

Then she'd say, "Now, close your eyes and make a wish." I'd close my eyes, and she'd remove her hand from mine. I'd blow.

If the eyelash disappeared, my wish was supposed to come true.

---

The thing is that I at least had to be aware of poets at that age - whether it was A.A. Milne, Buson (from a Child's Garden of Haiku book), R.L. Stevenson, or whoever, I tried to pick a new one each time.

I remember having to recite poems in grade school - what I remember is that I liked poetry, but I thought the poems themselves were pretty lacking and amateurish.

I don't know how heavy this is in terms of falling in love with poetry, but it did mean that poets were introduced to me at a tender age. I've been in and out of touch with poetry all my life since then, but poetry always impressed me with its intensity - you don't get pages and pages to complete the expression. It requires care and a particularly deft hand, I think, and I am enamored of both the intricacy and the intimacy of poems.

I've squandered my life in many ways - even in the past couple of years, I've been less than true to poetry - but poetry always takes me back. Thank goodness for second second chances.

Was inspired by Felix Dennis. He is my all-time favourite poet. Bought his collections, and then moved on to read more poets. Wasn't long before I fell in love with the simplicity of words and poetry.

Then in English class this year, my love was confirmed when we started to read the classic Shakespeare stuff. Never doubted my admiration for the art since.

Decided that I should try my hand at writing some myself-- so I did. And began to love it even more.