Thursday, December 02, 2010

Literary Blog Hop: Poetry


Literary Blog Hop 

I didn’t expect this question from this week’s Literary Blog Hop. I don’t read enough poetry anymore. For the past couple years, I tend to read novels. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a favourite poem. I heard it first in first year university, an English Narrative class. We studied a couple of the Romantics. I read some great work from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but my favourite was from his contemporary, William Wordsworth. A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Why is it my favourite poem? I’m not exactly sure. It’s the words he uses, the meaning behind them, the rhythm they produce when you read the poem out loud. 
 
A slumber did my spirit seal;
  I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
  The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
  She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course
  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

I also enjoy Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied with false compare.

Do these poems have any similarities? What are your favourite poems?


6 comments:

  1. Great choices, and what I'm learning from this question that I foolishly suggested is what an amazing selection of poetry I left out of my own post. As you ask for a favourite here's one

    Cut Grass

    Cut grass lies frail
    Brief is the breath
    Mown stalks exhale
    Long, long the death

    It dies in the white hours
    of young-leafed june
    with chestnut flowers,
    With hedges snowlike strewn

    White lilac bowed
    Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace
    And that high-builded cloud
    Moving at summer's pace.

    Philip Larkin

    thanks. Parrish

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  2. Beautiful. I love all of Wordsworth works!

    Being a poet, I can’t imagine my life without poetry. I live and breath it. I have loved to read a lot of poets and poetry over the years and still find something new every day. I have gone through phases liking, poets, and moving over to the the next. So many yet to read.

    Here is my Literary Blog Hop post!

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  3. Great choices! I don't read much poetry, but that may change in 2011...

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  4. I wasn't expecting this question either, but I've really been enjoying it. It's great to hear so many great poems.

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  5. Poetry has caught me in its spell. It mesmerizes me.

    Here's my post: http://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2010/12/literary-blog-hop-favorite-poem.html

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  6. Happy New Year! I have an award for you. Congrats :) Here is the info.

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