An Ode To Poetry

My daughter is studying poetry in English at school and I'm happy to say she is enjoying it. I am, of course, a big fan. We've had fun in the last week as she's shared with me some of the poems she's read and I've enjoyed sharing some of my favorite poems with her.

So, today's blog is an ode to poetry.
An ode to delicate diction, ravishing rhyme, and intricate imagery.

Here's my favorite Shakespearean Sonnet:

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Too good, yes?

And then there is the ever dramatic Emily Dickinson:

We grow accustomed to the Dark --
When light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye --

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night --
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --
And meet the Road -- erect --

And so of larger -- Darkness --
Those Evenings of the Brain --
When not a Moon disclose a sign --
Or Star -- come out -- within --

The Bravest -- grope a little --
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead --
But as they learn to see --

Either the Darkness alters --
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight --
And Life steps almost straight.

Finally, here's a fun bit of free verse I wrote a few years ago (pales in comparison to the previous poems... but there you go!)

Yesterday, I saw one of those pictures
The ones made up of thousands of tiny photographs
The colors and shading
Light and Dark
Artfully arranged so that when viewed all together
A full picture is displayed.

Is that what we look like?

Millions of miles out
Billions of tiny faces
The colors and shading
Light and Dark
The whole planet Earth
Artfully arranged so that when viewed all together
A full picture is displayed.

I am a piece of a magnificent whole.