Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Poetry Month Survey
On the very last day of National Poetry Month, I'm slipping in a reader survey about poetry. Go crazy!
1) How often do you read poetry?
2) Do you write poetry?
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them....
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
1) How often do you read poetry?
2) Do you write poetry?
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them....
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
posted by Tess | 11:54 AM
6 Comments:
I'll go first....
1) How often do you read poetry?
Not all that often. Usually I'll skim the poems in the New Yorker. I wish I had more time to go back and reread some of my favorite classics.
2) Do you write poetry?
It's an embarrassing habit, but I'll own up to it.
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
My #1 favorite is probably Louise Gluck, but I also like Margaret Atwood, Emily Dickinson, George Herbert, Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Adrienne Rich, T.S. Eliot...and a bunch of others.
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them....
I'm fond of these lines by Robert Frost:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
I think some classic poems definitely do because they've shaped our culture. I'm less sure about the difference that poets toiling in obscurity can make.
1) How often do you read poetry?
Not often enough! Now only occasionally when looking for something for my blog when I visit a blog (like Arch Words) with poetry posted, etc.
2) Do you write poetry?
Um...yes...but not well (at all.) Kind of like I play the piano--for myself but not usually in front of others.
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
I have a number of favorites...among them May Angelou, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson.
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them....
Emily Dickinson's use of words in lines like ...there's a certain slant of light, Winter afternoons...
and Frost's ending lines from The Road Not Taken:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And from Maya Angelou's
"Phenomenal Woman,":
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
Perhaps to individuals, who then can--or often DO make a difference in the world. It's underrated for sure.
1) How often do you read poetry?
Erm...not too often. Once or twice a month. Maybe.
2) Do you write poetry?
I've tried, but it's always too vague for me. When I need to express my emotions I find prose to be more useful and natural.
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
Favorite is easy, Walt Whitman.
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them.... From my favorite movie of all time: Dead Poets Society: "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
Yes, definitely. It's art. Life without art is not life, it's existence.
1) Not really. Too many books & movies (unless you count Shakespeare's plays as poetry).
2) I have not for years, but I was good when I was young and angsty.
3) I love O Henry-style poets, meaning that they have a punch at the end and a reason. Shakespeare's rhyming couplets at the end of sonnets has this impact. I dislike merely observational "words for words' sake" poets.
4) Strangely enough, I was reading Shakespeare's sonnets last night, something I haven't done since required to in high school. I had a fantastic time sorting through the language to find the pop song message underneath :) Here's No. 147:
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who are as black as hell, as dark as night.
5) The impact of a poet has lessened with the increase of songwriters and singers, and the true weight of poetry is not felt until much later. Think of how many poets were ignored or disregarded during their lifetimes; stands to reason we are doing the same thing now!
1) How often do you read poetry?
Not as often as I wish. In recent years, I've read poetry maybe a couple of times a year. I miss it.
2) Do you write poetry?
Not really. Every once in a blue moon, I'll write a few lines of gibberish. But nothing I'd actually consider poetry.
3) Do you have a favorite poet? a least favorite poet?
There are many I like...and I have multiple favorites...each for a different thing...T.S. Eliot, Robert Browning, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, Shakespeare, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Allen Ginsberg, Dorothy Parker, Nikki Giovanni...
Usually, the poets I don't like are, frankly, the ones I don't "get." I've never really "gotten" Ezra Pound, H.D., Wallace Stevens..
4) If you have any favorite lines of poetry, please share them....
Dorothy Parker's Resum<é>:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Shelley's "Music, When Soft Voices Die":
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
5) Do you think poetry makes any difference in the world?
Any difference...yes.
A major difference...less and less, sadly. As an art form, I think even the classics are becoming increasingly inaccessible to the average person. What power can it have if people don't bother to read it?
Thanks for this post, Tess! I've been wanting to go back and reread some old favorites, and this is exactly the impetus I needed!
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