Week 6
Hello once again! This is week was by far, my favorite, and the most enjoyable chapter in our books. It was all about the magnificence that I call ~poetry~. Now I know what the vast majority of people reading are thinking. "Poetry? Yuck, I hate poetry." Or something to that effect. But let me entice you with what poetry really is.

Truly poetry is feeling; the feelings, the thoughts, the words, that one cannot find to say aloud. It is the very essence of a person't soul. To quote the poet Robert Frost, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." Sure, this may seem dramatic, but so is poetry. It isn't just all love and daisies. Poetry can contain betrayal, murder, death, war, adventure, history, not to mention anything else you can think of at this moment. For example,

...Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath, Then her finger moved in the moonlight, Her musket shattered the moonlight, Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him - with her death... Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high! Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat, When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat...

Those are two excerpts from Noyes's The Highwayman. This happens to be one of my favorites.

Now besides death and love, poetry can have many subject matters. Nature is a popular one, I'm sure you have all heard the line "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and emotions or virtues. My favorite poem by my favorite poet is based on a virtue, let me recite it for you:

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. - And sweetest in the gale is heard and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm. - I heard it in the chilliest land and on the strangest sea, yet never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me. --By Emily Dickinson

I have to say that is a wonderful poem. Especially when tragedy strikes our lives in some way, I just think of keeping hope, because like the poem says it is a little bird that keeps us warm, it fights away sorrow, and never asks anything of us in return. I have loved this poem since I was twelve years old and I am now twenty. Not long to some, but for me, it seems like it.

One way people do not realize they are reading poetry is through children's rhymes. Nursery rhymes, lullabies- these are forms of poetry. Most of us have heard the song Hush Little Baby, Don't Say a Word, at some point in our childhood. Hey you didn't even realize you were enjoying poetry. I tried to think back and remember what my favorite childhood poem was, it is very obscure, my mother found it who knows where, but I still have it in a book that I read every Halloween, even though I am now grown-up.

There are ten ghosts in the pantry, there are nine upon the stairs, there are eight ghosts in the attic, there are seven on the chairs, there are six within the kitchen, there are five along the hall, there are four upon the ceiling, there are three upon the wall, There are two ghosts on the carpet, Doing things that ghosts will do, There is one ghost right behind me Who is oh so quiet.....BOO!!!

Wasn't that fun? It's great for kids when you recite it to them and recite it quietly. Then when you reach the "boo" at the end, yell loudly and see how high they jump.

Well, I have reached the end of my post. I apologize for not discussing the chapter contents, but I feel that when it comes to poetry, a book cannot convey the love and conviction that one who is as passionate about poetry as I can convey. I hope I have encouraged you to get out there and read some poetry. If there is a certain subject matter you prefer and would like to read poetry about, a well educated librarian should be well able to assist you. Poetry has as many topics as fiction. As for now I leave you with this-

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event."
- Robert Lowell