9 Favourite Poets and Some Stuff What They Wrote
But first and most importantly: happy Father’s Day, Dad! You’re the best!
So I’m not exactly a poetry buff. Certainly I’m not a poet; although I have one Hilroy containing a couple angsty verses dating back to my thirteenth or fourteenth year, even that is mostly semi-humourous garbage. I can’t resist the silly reversal in the final rhyming couplet, the groaner limericks (warning: links to a page on this blog that might be NSFW? Maybe? If you know how to rhyme?), or the forced scansion to fit in my joke.
Still, recently I’ve been trying to fill this gap in my knowledge and intellect. Because, hey, poems ain’t so bad. In fact, they’re pretty darn good, even if I can’t write them for beans. Actually, the overall quality of poetry is probably improved because I don’t write poems. Anyhow, in my continuing and slow journey through The Broadview Anthology of Poetry, here are some of my favourites so far.
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
I first began to appreciate Whitman’s work after reading Jonah Lehrer’s analysis and contextualization in Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Part of the reason I like this poem so much is because I also like what I’ve read of “Song of Myself” — in fact, I just bought Leaves of Grass and intend to get more into it soon — but this one boils the Whitman-y-ness into a bite-sized easily accessible piece.
It also maybe helps that I read Richard Dawkins’s rebuttal to the accusations of reductionism often attributed to the piece. I agree that understanding and quantification aren’t necessarily the enemy of aesthetic appreciation or feeling, but I think Whitman is making a subtler point. Whether we’re using science, writing, math, or any kind of communication, we can’t capture a lived experience in language or thought — and Whitman is exploiting the irony of trying to capture that experience itself in words.
A narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson is another poet whose works I randomly bought and will get more into as soon as I’m done reading all the books I already have. (So… yeah, never.) I like almost all her poems, but this one in particular has such a well crafted concept — simple and a little humorous and chilling. Already I’m thinking Dickinson is the master of making experiences so clear and still that that you feel like any stone you drop in will sound a long way down.
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Who doesn’t like Sonnet 116? Nobody with taste, that’s who.
I love reading Shakespeare aloud. I love how great it feels to pronounce his best lines, all the alliteration and complementary consonant sounds coming together perfectly, the iambic pentameter chugging along, the rhymes right where you want them to be — everything coming together like parts of a clockwork automaton. I marvel at the complexity and cleverness of the gear trains while at the same time the uncannily human motions of the machine evoke profound emotion.
To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
While I’ve always liked this poem, I’ve not always been in accordance with its message, which is roughly along the lines of Danny trying to get Sandy to make out with him in the drive-in movie scene of Grease. But of course Marvell’s version is more imagery-riffic. On the minus side, some of that imagery is gross, but then again, that’s kind of the point.
The ephemerity of life and love is kind of gross, but Marvell suggests that timeless Platonic emotions and actions are best suited for a timeless Platonic world, which this one ain’t. I still think, dude, maybe she just isn’t ready for sex and/or into you the way you think she is, so drop it. But at least the argument expands beyond its original object.
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
I still can’t put my finger on what this poem means to me, but its opening lines resonate: “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece full of straw. Alas!” What Eliot meant to say is one thing; the way this poem makes me think of cold wind whispering through dead grass and vast silent emptiness might be just me. Or it might not. All I know is the words are awesome.
A Married State by Katherine Phillips(1632-1664)
Well, maybe I’m not all that beyond my appreciation of the Oh, snap! rhyming couplet finish. I love this poem particularly for its final line, “There’s no such thing as leading apes in hell,” which, to my mind, is the seventeenth-century equivalent of “You go, girl!”
(If you didn’t spent forever and a closing night doing Shakespeare while you were a teenager, the reference is to the belief that women who died “old maids” were fated to lead apes in a special part of hell as punishment.)
Porphyria’s Lover and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Nobody does creepy like Robert Browning, whose narrative poems often speak for the kind of guys you would avoid sitting next to on public transportation. While it’s unclear why Browning decided to give his protagonist’s love the same name as an inherited disorder (… or vice versa? Note: please do not actually tell me which is the correct history. I don’t care enough to Google it.), it’s difficult not to get sucked in by the unhinged narrators’ stories.
basically, everything ever by Robert Service (1874-1958)
Just go away, Robert Service. Your crazy grasp of rhythm is making the rest of us look bad.
(I’m super excited to see your musical though!)
She Walks in Beauty Like the Night by Lord Byron (1788-1824)
It’s difficult to ignore Byron’s personality when reading his poems; trouble is, I know relatively little about him, but all the facts in my possession indicate douchenozzle-ry, at least when it came to personal relationships. That this poem sticks in my head despite the knee-jerk cynicism Byron brings out in me is testament to its lyricism.
What’s more, descriptions of how beautiful a woman is generally don’t pique my interest or draw me along; this one does. Just try saying the title aloud. It’s fun!