Is there a particular poem which fired your initial love and interest in poetry? For me it was this - an old, Native American poem titled The Great Sea: The great sea Has sent me adrift, It moves me as the weed in a great river, Earth and the great weather Move me, Have carried me away And move my inward parts with joy.
From Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) Heaven—Haven A nun takes the veil I HAVE desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.
The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.
I'm a big fan of Hopkins. One of the first poems I learned by heart was his "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" https://www.poemtree.com/poems/SpringAndFall.htm I've been struck by its simplicity ... almost all the words are one syllable, with a couple of two-syllable words, and only three with three syllables: two proper names, and the word "unleaving." And it strikes to the very core of our ephemeral existence.
This is the poetry I love. I don’t kid myself that this doesn’t have a lot to do with me being crap at deciphering the obscure stuff, and anyone who’s tried writing ‘simple’ poetry will know it’s no easier to write than other forms, but I prefer poetry that’s instantly gratifying.
Poetry is like books with pictures for this layman. I see the words in the structure, but the images are what moves me.
ohhhh a lovely topic for a thread; thanks for this! It's quite interesting, I find, that we DO, sort-of, have 'that one poem' which inspired us completely... as we've seen by the responses here. The problem with school is that we never really help students appreciate beautiful poetry, but instead just force them to tear the thing apart. For me it was W.B. Yeats's 'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven': Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. I just love the way the entire poem builds up with the lovely concrete images of the cloths, their colours, and the idea of spreading it beneath 'your' feet - and then turning it into the metaphysical realm of dreams, which are fragile - and then the perfect closing with asking the other to tread softly... very simple (especially compared with his later poetry starting with The Tower) but powerful edit: my username here is also a quote from Yeats, 'He reproves the curlew'
@ReproveTheCurlew - another gorgeous poem and again, one that doesn’t have you scratching your head, perplexed.
