REFLECTIONS ON POETRY

Reflections on Poetry

I would like to write all my thoughts about poetry, but discovered that it would require a whole book!
Consequently, I will do only a very short version.

My earliest memory of poetry is being taught to sing “You are my sunshine” at age four so I could sing it for my dad when he came home on leave from the army during World War Two. I have never forgotten it, and hearing it now carries me back to 1943.
The first poem I learned in school was

An icicle hung on a red brick wall
And said to the sun

I don’t like you at all
Drip drip drip

Through public and high schools I was fortunate to have teachers who loved poetry and also loved to read it aloud. They helped me develop my lifelong love of the written word, and poetry specifically.
Who can forget lines like –

“Grow old along with me,

the best is yet to be,

the last of life for which the first was made”,

or perhaps -

“reached out my hand and touched the face of God”,

or, -

“The moon was a ghostly galleon,

tossed upon cloudy seas,

the wind was a torrent of darkness,

among the gusty trees,

the road was a ribbon of moonlight,

over the purple moor

and the Highwayman came riding---”,

and, one last example –

“For I have promises to keep,

and miles to go before I sleep”.

While I can appreciate free form poetry, I still favor more classical rhyming poetry – poetry that can make your heart quicken with its beat, or bring tears to your eyes with its pure eloquence, or help you feel deeply a thought or emotion that eludes any other form of expression.
I thought I might do a list of my top ten favorites. I quickly discovered that ten is far too small a number. I also discovered that one hundred is not enough.
As a consequence I decided to do a list of poems as they came to mind – without reference to any of my many poetry books and without thinking too much about it.
I don’t necessarily think these poems are my favorites, but since they are the ones that come to mind, they must be important to me. It was an interesting and somewhat surprising exercise, and the ranking is just as I they came to me.
In looking at the list now however, I note that most of these were poems I first read in school. (Not surprising then that several of the pieces are by Canadian poets.)
Perhaps that also says something about the lasting and formative impact of our early years.
The list ends at twenty one, but I had to stop there because the floodgates had opened and poems were still pouring in. I tried to take one out to make it an even twenty, but could not bear to delete even one!
Here they are ---
1. The Highwayman -Alfred Noyes
2. The prisoner of Chillon – Lord Byron
3. The Congo – Vachel Lindsay
4. Beechwood Cemetery – Archibald Lampman
5. Temagami – Archibald Lampman
6. Charge of the Light Brigade – Alfred Lord Tennyson
7. Parliament Hill – H.H.Bashford
8. High Flight – John Gillespie Magee
9. Flanders Fields – Lt. Col. John McCrea
10. The Ballad of William Sycamore – Steven Vincent Benet
11. Sonnet 29 – William Shakespeare
12. The west wind – John Mansfield
13. When the little boy ran away - unknown
14. The children’s hour – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
15. The Inchcape Rock – Robert Southey
16. Simon Legree- Vachel Lindsay
17. Song of the ski – Wilson MacDonald
18. The dying eagle – E.J. Pratt
19. The moon song – Mildred Meigs
20. Land of story books – Robert Louis Stevenson
21. One two three – Henry Cuyler Bunner

You may know some of these but I doubt you will know them all.

You might find it interesting to try your own list, and if you do I would be delighted to hear from you.
I would also be happy to send you the words for any of these poems if you want, although one of the great wonders and benefits of the internet is that you can get the words for pretty much any English language poem if you know the title or even one line.
To close, some classic lines (last verse of The Raven) from Edgar Allan Poe. (this is one of the poems that came after I stopped listing) . Poe's genius was his ability to form indelible images in the mind of the reader!

And the raven, never flitting,
still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas
just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming
of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming
throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
.
mailto:deerthistle@sympatico.ca