Poetry ...love it or hate it?

I think this may be my favourite autumn poem: The Splendour Falls, Tennyson.

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

What a great poem, Quiltinggran. What a wonderful way of keeping her memory alive.

I'll get it right soon!

Oh quiltinggran..... love it, what a lovely lady she must have been [bunch]

Here's a a very special poem that my mother wrote and which I read at her funeral in 2004.

Memory

I must look down my memory years,
If I would find out who I am.
Memories of those I’ve loved
Memories of what I’ve been
Memories of things I’ve done
That made me what I have become.
All the memories I’ve shared
And those that I could never share
My inner secret memory
That made the total whole of me.

I must look down my memory years
And try to learn from what I see,
Forgive in others foolishness
I see reflected there in me.
When I and memory are dead,
All I could ever hope to be
Is just a minute living part
Of someone else’s memory.

Poetry ...love it or hate it?

Maybe I love it
Maybe I don't
Sometimes I'll read it
Mostly I won't.

I'm fond of the quicky
One glance and you're done
Not that I'm picky
I just read and run.

Robert Southey wrote The Inchcape Rock. No, I didn't know that - I Googled it!
Don't you think it's a pity that it seems to be out of fashion to learn poems by heart? I can still remember so much from my primary school days, including Cargoes; The Listeners by Walter de la Mare was another favourite. In secondary school, I seem to have learned most of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner at one time or another and have taught it so often I can quote it ad nauseam.

Totally agree Mishap ...can I be cheeky and ask you to share one of your poems??

yes grannyactivist John Masefield's cargoes was one of the first poems that I fell in love with too!!

Agree goldengirl ...one has to be in the mood for poetry ...both to read or create. However ...next time I'm in the library, I shall be looking for some of the poets that others have offered on this thread.

Especially 'Wendell Berry' ...thamx Butternut

I also like narrative poems ...can any one remember who wrote "The Inchcape Rock"?

Here's a modern version of 30 Days ....

Dirty days have September
April, June and November

From January until May
the rain it raineth every day

And all the rest have have thirty one
without a single blink of sun

Excepting February which has 28 days drear
and 29 in each leap year

And if any should have two and thirty
they'd be twice as wet and thrice as dirty.

I did! And we shouted and whispered and clapped. (Even Y13!) Poetry should be heard. But looking at how a poem is constructed is a bit like looking at a recipe and seeing how all the ingredients make a wondrous whole. But I know it's not for everyone!

Well - I would have chosen the Wendell Berry too - just love that poem - even though deep down I do not see the world as a graceful restful place, but one where nature is definitly red in tooth and claw. But it is a lovely idea, beautifully expressed.
I too love poetry and belong to a poetry group, where we try out writing ourselves (and help each other to improve) and also share poems that we have found that we think the others will enjoy.
I did not like poetry at school - some of the analysis and nit-picking may be illuminating and shed intellectual light on them (and help you pass an A-level), but can be death to the real centre of poetry, which is that it speaks directly to the heart - you can enjoy a poem for its rhythm or for the joy of the sounds without understanding the words in detail. I think that teachers should read children poems that are not exam-related, just for the joy of it!

"You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,"

You can't.

They tell you off, and say "you'll get diabetes".

Oh! 'Cargoes'! It brought it all back to me, and though I couldn't remember all the words, I do remember the 'da, da, da, di-da, da, da da' of the way the verses ran! Like 'Hyawatha'...it just rocked back and forth. Lovely!

I know very little about poetry, but just like what I like and this is one....

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry

Loathe the 'purple' poem it always sounds to me like a description of dementia but love Masefield's 'Cargoes'. I also fell in love with it at junior school it was the use of sounds in words to characterise the ships I so liked.

Recently listened to a R4 programme on two 19th century Yorkshire vernacular poets. One of the poems by Samuel Laycock was written on the birth of a baby during a period when trade was bad and millhands were workless and penniless. It still brings tears to my eyes, the love of a father for his child. It is quite long so I have taken a few verses out

Welcome, bonny brid (bouncing new born baby.)

Tha'rt welcome, little bonny brid,
But shouldn't ha' come just when tha did;
Toimes are bad.
We're short o' pobbies for eawr Joe
But that, of course, tha didn't know,
Did ta lad?

Aw've often yeard mi feyther tell
'At when aw coom i' th' world misel'
Trade wur slack;
And neaw it's hard wark pooin' throo—
But aw munno fear thee,-iv aw do
Thall go back

Cheer up! these toimes 'll awter soon;
Aw'm beawn to beigh another spoon—
One for thee;—
An' as tha's sich a pratty face
Aw'll let thi have eawr Charley's place
On mi knee.

(1 verse removed)

Come, come, tha needn't look so shy
Aw am no' blamin' thee, not I;
Settle deawn,
An' tak this haupney for thisel',
Ther's lots of sugar-sticks to sell
Deawn i'th' teawn.

(3 verses removed)

we've nobbut getten coarsish fare,
But' eawt o' this tha'll get thi share,
Never fear.
Aw hope tha'll never want a meal,
But allus fill thi bally weel
While tha'rt here.

But tho' we've childer two or three,
We'll mak' a bit o' reawm for thee,
Bless thee lad!
Tha'rt th' prattiest brid we have i' th' nest,
So hutch up closer to mi breast;
Aw'm thi dad.

Pobbies - Bread soaked with milk, Munno fear - Mustn't frighten,
Beawn to beigh - Going to buy, Skrikes - Shrieks or loud crying
Bally - Belly, Middlin' thrung - Rather crowded

At junior school we had a teacher who used to love poetry and I remember vividly the day she chose Masefield's 'Cargoes'. She had us clapping out the rhythm and then I asked if I could read it aloud; it was that day I discovered a love of poetry that I've never lost.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Poetry is my passion, either teaching it, reading it, or writing it! And you've all talked about poets I love - Manley Hopkins, Yeats...Carole Ann Duffy and uv fanthorpe are my favourite modern ones, and Wendy Cope is hilarious and thoughtful too. And Shakespeare, of course - one for us, my friends:

"No Spring, nor Summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face."

Well, if HE says so, who am I to argue?

I think Thomas Hood must have been a bit depressed when he wrote "No". There are still flowers in my garden, I saw a Red Admiral butterfly both yesterday and today, it is not cold enough to need the heating on all day, there are holly berries and cotoneaster berries still available for the many birds that visit my garden. Where was he, I wonder?

Here's a poem with a more positive feel even though it starts on a dark note.

Inversnaid - Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

That's interesting Carol. I still think of that poem when I am trying to work out when pay day is.

love poetry-all the ones mentioned but I read yesterday in the paper that the oldest recorded poem is
Thirti dayes hath novembir
April june and Septembir
Of xxviij is but oon
And alle the remenaunt xxxand j
(j is used instead of i at the end of a roman numeral)
and Groucho Marx said it was his favourite poem because it was the only one which made sense.

I like Daisy Goodwin and Wendy Cope too - the irony in their poetry appeals to my sense of humour.

The lyrics of so many songs are poetry too, aren't they just words combine with music.

I think I have done all those things except spit in the street and eat 3ibs of sausages in one go!

Carol - you are just like my mum! She was a genius at concealing the cuttings she nicked! My dad and I tried to pretend we weren't with her. I don't think she had the closed umbrella dodge but she always carried a small pair of nail scissors.

There are a few things in the poem I have done because I wanted to - couldn't manage 3 lbs of sausages, regrettably, but running sticks along railings, wearing slippers in the rain (chasing the dog out of my strawberries), gobbling up samples in shops and.....picking flowers in other people's gardens - well near enough - stealing cuttings and popping them in my closed umbrella when I visit public gardens and the grounds of stately homes.

I wear purple and yes, I'm getting old but so do my GDs - 19 and 9. So JJ is a bit out-dated now.