How I Fell in Love with Poetry
VloĆŸit
- Äas pĆidĂĄn 8. 08. 2021
- đ Read the Great Books with Hardcore Literature: / hardcoreliter. .
------------
đïž open.spotify.com/show/70IZA24... (Subscribe to the Hardcore Literature Podcast on iTunes & Spotify)
đ« hardcore-university.teachable... (Hardcore University, Exam Preparation Courses)
đ hardcore-literature.creator-s... Hardcore Literature Merch
âđŒ benjaminmcevoy.com My Personal Website
------------
Hardcore Literature Lecture Series
------------
đContents Page: cutt.ly/CmNhRY3
đ Anna Karenina: cutt.ly/vmNhAWv
đ Crime and Punishment: cutt.ly/rmNhFt5
â Persuasion: cutt.ly/amNhX7b
â In Search of Lost Time: cutt.ly/5mNh8oD
âïž The Heroâs Journey: cutt.ly/UmNjrE3
đž Siddharta: cutt.ly/YmNjuzi
đ Don Quixote: cutt.ly/cmNjoK4
â€ïžShakespeareâs Sonnets: cutt.ly/nmNlW7V
------------
Happy reading!
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking up at the stars . oscar Wilde
Ha! That's a wonderful one. Oscar was so tragically charming!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy oscar Wilde is brilliant love they way he writes make me feel good when I read poetry
@@BenjaminMcEvoy hey kindred spirit, I too fell in love with that poem you read, I fell in love with it when I read the book by Harold Bloom. Since I lived 30 minutes away from Yale University, I wrote an email to Bloom asking for him to sign my book. He said he didnât have signings anymore but he invited me to visit him at campus. I was flabbergasted and I feared I wouldnât be able to to contain myself and kiss him haha so I never replied back⊠and the he passed.
I found your channel today, and I just subscribed! Happy reading!
@@rosiesmallshaw I bet Bloom would have loved to have been kissed by you! That was a lovely gesture of him, to invite you to meet him.
For me it's this line, "I took the one less traveled by" - Robert Frost (The Road not taken). I was a teen when I first read it, made me think and ask why would he do that, and that has made all the difference :)
I love that one. I often think about it whenever I'm confronted with a difficult decision, or when I find myself on a new journey, requiring courage to go against the crowd!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy when I was 16/17 years old I took that line literally đ€Ł, but now that I'm a thousand years old, it hits differently..sometimes I took the road less traveled by choice, sometimes it's by circumstance..these days I just improvise đ
@@ronetteskiestante4064 Ah, yes, I completely relate to that. Metaphors are even more powerful when we take them literally at first, with time providing the change :)
'My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.'
Warsan Shire
That's beautiful :) Thank you for sharing! "I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude" - I love that.
:)
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
I had already known and loved the last lines of the poem but I appreciated it even more after one of my college friends cited it while we studied for a stressful final exam. It reminded me that I had to stay focused on the obligations I had in front of me though I would have liked to engage in pleasant distractions
Beautiful choice! And I love the personal meaning this poem has for you. I know this one by heart as I used it during my time as a teacher. Itâs a lovely one to carry around with us through our lives :)
For me that line was Gwendolyn Brooks; We Real Cool. It was just so cool yet caught up with such doom.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Wow. Nice choice. Thank you for sharing :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy It's not my favourite poem today, but it showed a side that wasn't dusty old books, or boing dissection by an English teacher. it was the first I enjoyed reading for no other reason than enjoyment. I think that is a much-underrated breakpoint for readers, finding their way into a genre.
Tennysonâs Ulysses-three lines actually-âI am a part of all that I have metâ. âCome my friends, âTis not to late to seek a newer worldâ and last, âTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yieldâ
Powerful stuff right there! This poem used to give me insomnia - it would just play over and over in my mind all night..
Not an exact line, but the last section of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias":
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Ozymandias haunted me too. Such a powerful reminder that will stay with us through the ages!
Damn! I had just posted a long comment here but it has suddenly disappeared đ±
Anyways. The line that still moves me the most is from a poem by Anna Akhmatova.
âYou will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.â
That's so beautiful - sublime and moving. This is the first time I've read this one. I love it. Thank you so much for sharing :)
For me, it was Shelley. I was doing poetry in my Higher English (30 years ago) and it had all been pretty boring, then my teacher brought out Ozymandias. It stopped me in my tracks. I had never heard anything like it. I can still never get over the fact itâs only 14 lines - 14 lines of perfection. We did a close reading of it and it was at that point poetry became this beautiful thing that was more than just words you read on a page. Itâs not one line, but a few that have always stuck in my gut:
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions readâŠ
And
âŠThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
Thereâs a poem called Fulangas ChrĂŹosd by a Scottish Gaelic poet from Balquhidder in Scotland, called Dughall Bochanan. He was known as a spiritual poet. He was an extremely tormented soul, which he carried in his work and he wrote this poem, which translates as The Suffering of Christ and is about the Crucifixion. It is the single most devastating poem Iâve ever read. Iâm not a religious person, although raised Catholic, but I was in tears reading it. It is brutal and it shook me to the core and has lived in my mind since. Sadly, it doesnât have the same power in English.
That's such a powerful line. That hit me. "for I am very dead thing in whom love wrought new alchemy"
I think I might cry at that line. You're so right about it being powerful.
I'm not a teenager, maybe a late bloomer but maybe it does represent where I am now. I just think it's such a beautiful way to encapsulate connectivity, how everything is one, how love came from something ugly or dead and yet it's still about the persons own emotional state. I think poetry can do what alot of other art forms do that set me in awe and just say things that hurt because of how beautiful and creative they are, and all that expression and because of the flexibility and creativity one get's to see things as they never saw them before like love being the same as something we would consider very apart from it like death. I also don't think it's few and far between to be connected with the exact emotions either. I men I'm not and wasn't but I feel like I am through you, if I was screaming a huge FU to the universe and everyone who is happy. I may have said it beautifully and creatively but I also said i'm in pain.
I just heard a poet say, I'm in pain. It's interesting because I didn't cry for his pain to all my knowledge I cried for it's language and it's regalness
Agree, this is a powerful line â€
""Hope" is the thing with feathers -- That perches in the soul -- And sings the tune without the words -- And never stops -- at all" -Emily Dickenson.
"Digging" by SĂ©amus Heaney and "Spring Pools" by Robert Frost are favourites of mine also.
Beautiful. Emily Dickinson is one of my favourites today, and your choice in particular is one I love. Heaney and Frost are great ones too. Thank you for sharing, Eoghan :)
'Digging' by Heaney is my all time favourite poem. My childhood canon as you say.
"Between my finger and my thumb, The squat pen rests; snug as a gun"
@@DT-pd8hw I always loved that one too!
You didn't have to obliterate us with Emily đ đą She's transcendent
Mine is âThe art of losing isnât hard to master/so many things seem filled with the intent/to be lost that their loss is no disasterâ from One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. A beautiful meditation on loss:)
:)
That is most definitely a beautiful meditation. Thanks so much for sharing, Shaktivel :)
Bishop is one of my favorite poets, and this is one of her most powerful and memorable creations.
"The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more." The last two lines from 'The Solitary Reaper' - by William Wordsworth and later it was Robert Frost.
Very nice choice. I loved this poem, along with 'We Are Seven'. Frost is a wonderful one too :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy I will look it up for sure. Thanks for making me fall in love with classic literature once again, before 2021 I hadn't read anything classic for almost 8 years. Now a third of my TBR is classic literature.
@@vermadheeraj29 That's amazing! It makes me so happy to hear that :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Me as well, keep up the good work đ fyi just read 'We are seven' it is absolutely beautiful. A very special thanks for this one.
I was a very melancholic teenager. Hell, now Iâm a melancholic fifty year old. Morrissey was my hero.
For me it was, âI should have been a pair of ragged claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas.â From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.
I first read that when I was about fourteen, and it blew me away. That imagery was the most perfect thing Iâd seen in my young life. I could go on with other lines that have struck me in other stages of my life, but I donât want to turn a comment into a novel.
Oh, yes, mine too! I devoured every single album by The Smiths. "Keats and Yeats are on your side / While Wilde is on mine". Or, in your case, Wendy, T.S. Eliot. Terrific choice. I love the musicality and visual power of that line. I can see why it blew you away!
In 7th grade (US, so age 12) I memorized âAbraham Lincoln Walks at Midnightâ by Vachel Lindsay. The whole poem and the experience of memorizing it, and reciting it to my class, did it for me. And even though I struggled with poetry for decades, and still do in my 70s, that one poem hooked me for life.
These lines from "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" gripped me when I read them in a college English class:
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
I wandered lonely as a cloud.....
Oh so many lines, so little time!! Poetry is the conduit for my soul's voice. I am lost in it.
Okay, so current favourite line/s - for sure it's Emily Dickinson's, There's a Certain Slant of Light [320] - the whole poem makes me fizz and spark and spiral and question, but the line that really does it is: -
When it comes, the Landscape listens -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death -
Is there anymore to say really...?
Always fabulous, Ben.
Sharon x
I absolutely adore that poem, so I'm thrilled this one is a favourite for you, Sharon. I found myself chanting it during my swim the other day, meditating on each one, one line per lane:
There's a certain slant of light,
Winter Afternoons -
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -
I really must do more with Dickinson. Her poetry moves me in ways beyond my comprehension :)
If you like Dickinson's "There's A Certain Slant of Light", I recommend checking out this video essayist Nerdwriter1 and his video "How Emily Dickinson Writes A Poem". In it, they break down the poem "Tell all the truth but tell it slant" and highlight all the inner subtle meanings of the poem that I would have never even noticed or understood. It kind of flipped my whole perspective of the poem and made me understand it in a new, better, more knowledgeable way because I learned more about how Dickinson was crafting her meaning that she was conveying like a kaleidoscope. As Ben has said in the past, Emily Dickinson is a very cognitively demanding poet and this poem showcases it. It's deceptively complex in it's simplicity. So definitely check out that Nerdwriter1 video if you haven't already. Also check out his videos on EE Cummings and Yeats. Happy reading!
@@ajiththomas2465 I've seen those videos (Cummings and Dickinson) and think he did a tremendous job with them. Great channel all around too with wonderful production value. Kaleidoscopic is definitely very suitable word for Dickinson :)
It was Eliot. I do not remember which line. Perhaps itâs âI do not hope to turn againâ, or âbetween the idea/and the reality/between the motion/and the act/falls the shadowâ. Anything by him was magical to me then. He has greatly changed my preference of poetry and my own writing style :)
That's amazing :) Thank you for sharing!
Hope is the thing with feathers.
For me itâs Allan Ginsbergâs Howl âI saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madnessâŠâ
Such an iconic opening! Begs you to chant the whole thing :)
Rilkeâs Duino Elegies first line
âWho, if I cried out, would hear me among the ranks of the angels?â
âWhat does it matter that my heart couldnât keep her..
The night is full of stars and she is not with meâ
Pablo Neruda
The Saddest Lines
âI rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.â
- Seamus Heaney
âWherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger.â
- David Wagoner from âLostâ
those are fantastic!
âThe which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the lonelinessâ
-Edgar Allan Poe
I donât think Iâll ever grow out of Poe!
He grips you hard.
The first line that took me into poetry was from Keats' "Fill me a brimming bowl"; and oddly enough, it was the very first two lines of the poem: "Fill me a brimming bowl, and in it let me drown my soul: But put there in a drug, designed to banish women from my mind." I think I was going through a bit of a first-love (the end of one) melancholy experience, and this hit the spot. It is a bit embarrassing to say it out loud, but it did lead to a great love for poetry. Thanks, Benjamin, for the video!đđ
Mine is a bit stupid:
"Langt ĂŸykki mĂ©r.
Ligg einn saman
karl afgamall,
ån konungs vörnum.
_Eigum ekkjur
allkaldar tvĂŠr,
en ĂŸĂŠr konur
ĂŸurfu blossa_".
It's from Egil's saga. He was a fearsome viking and a good skald, but at the end of his life he become weak and his late verses are pretty sad.
I was not able to find proper translation into English, but basically, here he tells how old and lonely he is and then creates a riddle about his heels by comparing them to two widows who are cold at night.
It was winter, I felt a bit lonely and my heels were cold too; and Egil made me laugh ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Wow. Not stupid at all. That's such a cool choice, and you really give a good sense of the story. I love the Skaldic stuff, and I now regret not specialising in it back in university. Wonderfully rich tradition :)
For me the gateway poet was a mixture of Keats along with Frost..... anyways loved your video
Keats and Frost are wonderful gateway poets. I love that term - like a gateway drug. Thank you for sharing :)
The way you described the âinnocent state before you knew anythingâ reminds me of when I was first diving into the vast world of classical and romantic era music. The first concerto I ever remember hearing was Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (Ray Chen) and I remember being blown away. As a pianist, I was even more enraptured by the first Piano Concerto I heard - Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No.5 (The Egyptian) played by Lucas Jussen. My knowledge of the musical canon is now infinitely more expansive but somehow these pieces have much more weight in my heart than they would warrant if I had heard them later. This was before I moved away to attend college, and these pieces somehow remind me of home.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door... I fell In Love with Poe and subsequently poetry soon after
That's one of the eeriest works of literature I know.
My first love was nursery rhymes ( Childcraft series ;64) and school. Memorizing some. Started writing poetry in '73 in Colo. I do tend to rhyme too much, but have done some good prose, when I let it flow. Still want to do my book, with poetry and short stories. I have many of mine on FB, but written down in dozens of notebooks, and my writing is no good now, and eyesight going. Ha. What passes for poetry now ,sometimes I question, as it has changed in some ways, more a Haiku . But Browning, Sandburg,Tennyson,Yeats, many others, were the founders, among so many, who gave us heaven in words. I Particularly love the way Bradbury did poetry in his poems ans well as most of what he wrote, as he is my fave,since 1971 8th grade Enlgish class, thanks to my teacher. Was hooked for life. No one else like him.
I'm so happy that you mentioned Morrissey haha. Interestingly it was his lyrics, and Bob Dylan's and Nick Cave's, that made me want to read great literature, cause all of them are noted bookworms. đ
Beautiful narration, Ben! I loved your idea of a personal childhood canon. With my 14-year-old self confronted with the hopelessness of love for the first time, Shelley's "Mutability" resonated so much that I would read it multiple times during sleepless nights:
Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou-and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep...
Thank you, Kirtan :) So glad you loved it! And how wonderful to hear that Shelley became a friend of yours the same age he became my friend! Wake to weep - that is powerful!
âBut the fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning roundâ
I sang in my school choir every year from 3rd grade on. Having to memorize lyrics really made the poetry a part of me. I have gotten away from music now but poetry is still in my soul.
Beautiful :) Thank you so much for sharing. When poetry is in one's soul, one doesn't stray too far from it for too long!
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.
Robert Frost-The Road Not Taken
I remember this last stanza as a look back from the end game of life and celebrate treading my own path.
These lines from the tenth stanza of Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality":
"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."
I loved it when I was 19; I love it still at 67.
What a beautiful choice! Thank you for sharing, Dorothy. I love that it has moved you both at 19 and 67. That's a testament to the power of Wordsworth. I personally find this one, Tintern Abbey, and many of the passages from The Prelude to be endlessly affecting.
Donne's "No man is an island, " is terrific but also "My candle burns at both ends," by Millay charmed me and of course, St. Louis' T.S. Elliot's "April is the cruelest month." Then throw in some Lake poets and Lord Byron's "She walks in beauty." Longfellow's "This is the forest primeval," which is good to desclaim while walking in the woods, which brings you to Frost's "Two roads diverged in a wood." "Good fences make good neighbors," and "But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep." DylanThomas' "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." Some Rupert Brooke because he was so lovely. Lewis Carroll's "Come let us speak of cabbages and kings." So many good lines.
Wow. What a knock-out collection. Donne, Edna St. Vincent Millay, T.S. Eliot, Byron, Longfellow, Dylan Thomas, Frost, Rupert Brooke, Lewis Carroll. That's a canon right there!
I remember reading the Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath for the first time and being on the verge of tears. 'I have fallen a long way'. It makes my heart ache.
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. Sylvia Plath has such a heart piercing quality.
Your voice is always magical...perfect for serious literature
Soooooo, I have long love journey with poetry. And actually the lines that made me fall in love with poetry in Russian, and I didn't find a translation of this poem so I translated it by myself (of course there's no rhythm:)
"He asked only for a piece of bread
And looked at the living pain
And someone put a stone
In his extended hand " by Lermontov
And also I like this one by Alexandr Block:
The sound is distinct, the way it used to be,
And all my sins are in your holy prayers.
Ophelia, my nymph, remember me.
My soul is being vainly filled, in trepidation,
With distant and delightful recollection"
In Russian:
"Đ ĐČŃĐ” Đ·ĐČŃŃĐžŃ ĐČЎалО, ĐșĐ°Đș ĐČ ŃĐ” ĐŒĐ»Đ°ĐŽŃĐ” ĐŽĐœĐž.
ĐĐŸĐž ĐłŃĐ”Ń Đž ĐČ ŃĐČĐŸĐžŃ ŃĐČŃŃŃŃ ĐŒĐŸĐ»ĐžŃĐČĐ°Ń ,
ĐŃДлОŃ, ĐŸ ĐœĐžĐŒŃĐ°, ĐżĐŸĐŒŃĐœĐž.
Đ ĐżĐŸĐ»ĐœĐžŃŃŃ ĐŽŃŃĐ° ŃŃĐ”ĐČĐŸĐ¶ĐœĐŸ Đž ĐœĐ°ĐżŃĐ°ŃĐœĐŸ
ĐĐŸŃĐżĐŸĐŒĐžĐœĐ°ĐœŃĐ”ĐŒ ĐŽĐ°Đ»ŃĐœŃĐŒ Đž ĐżŃĐ”ĐșŃĐ°ŃĐœŃĐŒ."
And also I m obsessed with a French poetry and the first line was "
Mâauront de toi pour jamais sĂ©parĂ©," "Rappelle-toi" Alfred de Musset
You translated beautifully :) Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I can see how this made you fall in love with poetry. Wonderful stuff!
Simply an insightful video. I had realised this sometime ago that the varying tastes of poetry among people help us to enjoy different viewpoints as others may help me understand what I fail to appreciate.
Friedrich Hölderlin is always with me.
As a Mandarin speaker, it is a lyric poem (also called "Ci" ) by Li QingZhao, which I read in the Chinese literature textbook in junior high that inspired me the most.
"æšć€éšçéąšé©ïŒæżçĄäžæ¶æźé ăè©Šćć·ç°ŸäșșïŒć»éæ”·æŁ äŸèăç„ćŠïŒç„ćŠïŒææŻç¶ è„çŽ çŠă"
it means :
Last night the rain was light, the wind fierce.
And deep sleep did not dispel the effects of wine.
When I ask the maid rolling up the curtains,
She answers, "The crab-apple blossoms look the same."
I cry, " But can't you see? Can't you see?"
The green leaves are fresh but the red flowers are fading.
The poem tells the sorrow because of the spring is passing, it simply express emotion in such beautiful way, that sparked my interest in poetry and literature.
That's beautiful. Li QingZhao paints such a vivid picture, laden with emotion. I can see why this sparked your interest in poetry!
yes, you can fall in love with poetry, reading it, But to be born a poet, and by reading poetry a poet can discover themselves in it.
Iâm a complete beginner to poetry and at Christmas I was gifted a little book of poetry. Itâs 100 poems by Seamus Heaney, and I have to say some of his poems have touched my soul, to the point where they actually make me tearful, because they are so beautiful. Youâre absolutely right, Ben. It is just a line or two that really resonates. This little book I received is an absolute gem of a book and I thoroughly enjoy dipping in and out of it. It truly is a book of lyrical beauty.
Donneâs âA Valediction: Forbidding Mourningâ
Patrick Kavanaugh:
"O stoney grey soil of Monaghan,
The laugh from my love you thieved,
you took the gay child of my passion,
you gave me your clod conceived."
Anyone who has ever had to milk cows at 5am, will surely take to it like a duck to water!! đ We literally used to jump into the hot cow turds mid-winter, to warm our feet. I wouldn't mind, we're it not for the fact that I am now lactose intolerant... But in those days, it was a question of:
"adding the half pence to the pence, and prayer to shivering prayer, until
they had dried the marrow from the bone " (W B Yeats)
And yes, I am Irish â€
For me the phrase 'Mind forged manacles' in William Blake's poem London really got me hooked on poetry, it's a phrase I always think about. Wilfred Owen's poems also had a huge impact in allowing me to understand the power of poetry -- I don't think I could even begin to comprehend what WW1 was like until I read Dulce et Decorum est and Exposure.
Such an incredible phrase. It haunted me ever since I was young, studying London at school. You're so right about the power of Wilfred Owen. I get chills, and sometimes tear up, when reading Owen.. "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood | Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs..."
I'd love to go back to the greats you've cited in this video. I've only recently gotten back into poetry after having not even thought about it for years, and what brought me back was a collection by Misha Collins, an actor for decades before his debut (and so far, his only) was published in 2020. The poem that caught my eye was called "Present. Tense." and is about his children finding dandelion pods they want to make a wish on. The speaker (in this case, Collins himself) is in a hurry and almost doesn't want to take the time to let his children make their wishes, but the very last line of the poem was a quote from his daughter before she blew on the pod: "I wish for this." From there, I started reading poetry again almost compulsively, and I started writing again as well! It's such a wonderful feeling to connect to such a beautiful art form. I know there are a lot of modern poets who are seen as making a mockery of the genre, but there are also some very talented writers as well: Karyna McGlynn, Rhiannon McGavin, and Savannah Brown are a few that come to mind and for the most part they're very accessible for those who are just starting out and may be intimidated by poetry. I know I still am: I have a copy of The Essential Whitman on my shelf that I've been dying to get to, but at the same time I'm waiting for the right moment! I'm hoping that my newfound interest in Shakespeare inspires me to make bolder choicesđ
In leaves, no step had trodden black
Nice :)
Nursery rhymes; and "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll; Poe's "The Raven"; Dr. Seuss and KJV. These before adolescence. During high school I liked "Sunlight on the Garden" (my English gf copied it out in longhand for me) by MacNeice and "Call It A Good Marriage" by Robert Graves. I recall another poem by Graves that caught my eye b/c of the, to me, arcane title "The Nosegay"; albeit I don't recollect the poem. At the beginning of college I read T.S. Eliot, Auden, Spender, George Barker; my late adolescent infatuation was Eliot. But this was to be about that singular line wasn't it? The writer whose lines I recall knocking me out was Blaise Cendrars, lines from prose poems such as the devastating poem Les paques a New York, The Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France (I'm getting goosebumps just naming the titles! "Profond aujourd'hui", "Le Ventre de Ma Mere", "Panama, or The Adventures of My Seven Uncles", "La Formose". From Profound Today "I no longer know whether I'm looking at the starry sky at night or a drop of water under the microscope." "The gesture of infusoria is more tragic than the story of a woman's heart." From Eliot first it was his short lyric, though I had memorised most of Eliot before ever I took a poetry class, "La figlia che piange":
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair- / Lean on a garden urn- / Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair- / Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise- / Fling them to the ground and turn / With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: / But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
Nursery rhymes constitute the first exposure to poetry for so many of us, and they are universally loved by young children. In my case, I lost the taste for poetry for most of the rest of my youth, but fell in love with it again in my maturity, awakening to what I believe Harold Bloom called its cognitive splendor.
The lines that got me into poetry were from a sonnet in Love's Labour's Lost, Act 4, Scene 3
"If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
To lose an oath to win a paradise?"
I've since then been on a poetry rampage searching for the right poet to obsess over. I came across Byron and immediately fell in love. I know he's quite controversial and he took a jab at Keats more than once but he's just so darn good. The other Romantics are also really enjoyable. My favourite poem is When I Have Fears by Keats.
P.S. Love your channel, keep up the great work.
From Wendell Berry's "How to be a Poet (to remind myself)" -
There are no unsacred places;
Only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Wow. I love that. Thank you for sharing with me. Only sacred places and desecrated places. That is some powerful philosophy right there. And how true. What a great way to look at the world :)
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look upon my works, Ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains."
As a GCSE student who despised all poetry and thought it dribble for those who couldn't write stories, this was my epiphany.
That's beautiful :) What a fantastic one to have as your poetic epiphany!
true...I memorized many one liners....its wonderful when someone "gets it" I love "If I had longer arms I would push the clouds away" and "Clouds are not the cheeks of angels you know, they're only clouds friendly sometimes but you can never be sure." by Rod McKuen from Pushing the Clouds Away
I join the melancholic teenage club! The meeting point of reality and idealisation often was luring me to these misty grounds. Gothic metal and heartbreaking classical music helped a lot as well.
Yet, the turning point was a line that chose me. It literally got stuck in my brain and without noticing, one day I found myself repeating it in my head. Honestly, I haven't perceived it melancholic even though it probably could be seen in that light. The poem is by Mark Strand and says the following:
"Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same. I empty myself of my life and my life remains".
Of course, later more poems have appeared touching deeply my heart. Still, I always seem to come back to this one- I change and I am the same.
Thank you for the video and the reminder of these little precious moments :)))
Edna St Vincent MIllay: And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
I love poetry, my mum used to read it to me from a young age. But the first time a poem spoke to me as I became a more independent reader was when I was about 14. It was
âIt seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.â
I remember that feeling of love for those words. It is by Wilfred Owen and he has written far better poems but that spoke to my 14 year old self.
Wow. What a great one to fall in love with. Wilfred Owen's life being cut short was a tragedy. I think of all the poetry that could have been. I remember when I was 14, copying out one of Owen's works by hand and trying to mimic his half-rhymes and sight rhymes. Thank you for sharing, Caroline.
For me personally, the line which always sticks in my head is the punk poet Luke Wright who wrote a poem called âThe lay-bys and by-passesâ about the hidden beauty of England, and when writing about our country he says âI love and loathe it like I love and loathe myself.â Itâs simple yet so brilliant. Whilst being a fantastically skilled writer, he has many poems which are again simple but brilliant. He taught me that the words of poetry donât have to be unnecessarily sesquipedalian, like Iâve just been by using that word ahah. But poems can just be simple, and sound so much more effective.
For me, it was Edward Roland Sill's "The Fool's Prayer."
The lines:
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.
âThe ill-timed truth we might have kept-
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!
"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun"
Digging by Seamus Heaney.
The first line that I continually and repeatedly pored over. Even when I didn't fully understand it, something about it burrowed deep into my skull and never really left
The poem that made me fell in love with poetry was "Son of light and shadow" by Miguel Hernandez one of the best poets in XX century Spain:
Some translated verses:
"Ask us to throw you and me on the blanket,
you and me about the moon, you and me about life.
Ask that you and I burn melting in the throat,
with all the firmament, the earth shaken."
Also two other poems impacted me in my teens:
-The beginning of the Duinos Elegies:
"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one were to suddenly take me to its heart, I would vanish into its stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear."
And Death by Vicente Aleixandre:
"Ah, soon, soon; I want to die in front of you, sea, in front of you, vertical sea whose foams touch the skies, to you whose celestial fish between clouds they are like birds forgotten from the depths!"
Wow! I can see why this made you fall in love with poetry. Thank you so much for sharing this with me :)
From fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty's rose might never die
But as the riper should by time decease
His tender heir might bear his memory.
I was 15 and english isn't my native language
But Shakespeare is a name that makes even those who haven't read him think of something great.
And i just had opened my newly downloaded pdf of sonnets and these four lines got me i tried to keep on reading but it was too much couldn't understand at that time. I kept reading his quotes from plays and other sonnets on google but these four lines gave me that little nudge. 4:56 yes
Nice one :) Such a classic, and a tender reminder for Fair Youths across the ages. I've heard from a lot of non-native English speakers recently who have felt the power of Shakespeare. It makes me so happy. Thank you for sharing!
âBecause I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -â
I must admit I need to thank the tv show Dickinson for this, but Iâm so thankful I was introduced to a poet after my own heart and has awakened in me a hunger to find more poets that resonate with me.
Amazing choice. I love Dickinson :) I find her difficult but endlessly rewarding and chantable. I'll have to search out that TV show!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy itâs an Apple TV exclusive, if you donât mind selling a bit of your soul to them. Itâs quite an enjoyable show, I think semi-based/inspired on her life but also kind of magical-realistic and some modern interpretations.
@@danielaayers3449 Sounds like a good one. Some soul-selling is about to go down :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Hahaha! Nice, would love to hear what you think of it!
John Cooper Clarke;
'Through the valley of the long - lost women.
Dreaming under the driers.'
"Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, but rather find strength in what remains behind." - William Wordsworth's _Intimations Of Immortality_ It was a reminder that one cannot change the past, but can use the lessons it teaches to help support the present.
Beautiful. One of my favourite works in the English language. I love your meditation upon it!
I don't know if I have a line. I just started reading poetry and what I started with was volcanoes be in Sicily by Emily Dickenson Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography-
Volcanoes nearer here
and so and so, I like the craft. I enjoy the meaning behind her words. I like the imagery, it's like showing and not telling. It's like I'm able to express a feeling that just saying " I like poetry" could never convey. I enjoy the technique of her using volcanoes something so powerful...I just enjoy the art and the skill. I am in awe of every line together. Maybe I'm bad at reading poetry
maybe I'm in love with Dickenson. I see a lot of myself in her. I like her moxy.
I don't know any piece of poetry that actually got me intrested in poetry until discussing her but I'm still new so I don't know
Hey man. I really appreciate the videos.
I see you have the new Ishiguro book behind you. Iâm interested to know what you think of his work? I adore The Remains Of The Day but I am yet to read much more that he has written than that. What do you think?
Thank you, Frank :) I loved Never Let Me Go. Klara and the Sun is quite similar. I think readers either love Ishiguro or don't take to him at all. I can understand both reactions. I'm planning to do a podcast episode of Klara and the Sun, where I will discuss his works generally too. I haven't finished this one yet, but I've found it quite thought-provoking so far and would be keen to discuss it!
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Thanks for the reply. I'll be sure to check that episode out.
âShe should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Lifeâs but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.â
Christopher Hitchens said that he couldn't do without the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert and gothic architecture.
thanks for this
You're so welcome, Philip! Thank you for watching :)
the one line ,
i remember in class 2 there was a poem by walter delaMere
Slowly silently now the moon,
walks the night in her silver shoon
As a kid i would fantasize this so much
Thank you for another great video!
I really want to ask for your opinion on what makes âa poemâ. I really adore William Wordsworth and Emily Dickinson, along with some classic poĂ©t in my country. Recently I have tried to go through some modern poetry and I feel like most of them do not satisfy me. From what I observe many poems lack a sense of rhythm and rhymes, along with images that make no sense. So I want to ask if you think a poem should have rhythm and rhyme or not, and what is your view on modern poetry.
Thanks a lot
What a great question :) I feel the same way as you. Dickinson and Wordsworth are tremendous, and the modern poets don't satisfy me half as much! I think a poem doesn't necessarily need rhyme, but perhaps does need some fashion of rhythm - most of all, it needs life and blood, a beating heart. And the problem with most of the modern poets is that they don't convey the human experience with any depth. I'll talk about this more in a dedicated video, so thank you for the idea :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks a lot for your reply đđ
What has stuck with me for years is the compass conceit in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
I really love your voice ! Why do not you make audiobooks
Thank you, my friend :) Perhaps one day I will! I would love to do an audiobook on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
"(You're) a common sense
thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
trawling your dark as owls do."
You're by Sylvia Plath. She is my favorite poet right now.
Sylvia Plath is extraordinary. I often return to her 'Ariel'. Thank you so much for sharing :)
_Nature's first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold._ (R. Frost) is one. (Great alliteration, 2 and then 4! initial consonant sounds.)
_I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul._ (W. E. Henley) is another.
_Death be not proud_ (Donne) is a third.
I have a book called 'Birds: A Portrait in Pictures And Words' by Charlotte Fraser, which is a collection of poems and extracts of poetry. I remember finding it in a National Trust gift shop and I knew I must have it. It's from reading this book that I knew I wanted to be a poet.
I, similarly to you as a teenager, find myself getting very frustrated with poetry sometimes (although I am yet to hurl a Dylan Thomas book across the room)
I'm glad you can relate! In hindsight, that difficulty most likely motivated me to learn more about the art form!
Yeats' "I shall arise now and go to Inishfree" which we had read to us in Junior school turned me on to Keats and I saved to buy a copy of his poetry, but my grandfather bought it for my birthday. It's battered from many readings and study. Would I part with it? Not on your life! I have other editions now, but the original one is still the most evocative.
For me, it was when we took a look at song lyrics as one would a poem in the 7th grade. The song was Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes, and the opening just stuck with me:
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me
But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.. William Blake.
Awesome choice. This is one that always staggered me with its power and insight!
I worked in research for a university and a friend of mine there happened to be the operator of a scanning electron microscope which was used to examine matter from outer space (meteorite samples, moon rocks, interstellar dust particles etc). He had that line of poetry on the door to his SEM lab. When you think about it you realize the depth of poetic meaning this quotation represented in that particular context.
I think the first time I fell in love with poetry was when I came across a poem by David Barker, titled "Song for Naughty Children", in the weird poetry journal "Spectral Realms No. 2." It just was so funny. It opened a whole new world too me. Today I read every thing from the poetry by H. P. Lovecraft to Milton.
"The Maiden was in the Sepulchre,
Pulling off her dress,
When wandered in a dog-faced ghoul;
He made an awful mess."
From the Earl King:
âIch liebe Dich, mich reizt Deine schöne Gestaltâ
Beautiful :) I must read more Goethe. His status as literary titan is secure, and yet I know so little of him!
I fell in love with literature when I read "Kabale und Liebe", a tragedy by Friedrich Schiller (who also wrote the poem Beethoven would close his 9th Symphony with) at school. It's about a love between a young nobleman and the daughter of a commoner and the people who are trying to part them due to their "class difference".
In 4th there is a moment which could have stopped the catastrophy in the end. A man tries to explain his superior, the nobleman that his father is responsible for deviding him from her. He says: "Ihr Vater, Ihr Vater..." meaning "Your father, your father..." but the nobleman mistakes it for "ihr Vater, ihr Vater..." translating to "her Vater, her Vater..." (is responsible for it).
Both sound the same and the only difference is in the capital letter, which you obviously can't hear. So in his rage the nobleman knocks the man unconscious and so the catastrophy wasn't prevented.
The genius of lies in the fact that only people have to talk to persons superior to them (or strangers) using this pronoun "Ihr". In other cases you would use the more informal pronoun "du" or "dein" (thy).
So the class devide between nobles and commeners is even on the level of language responsible for the catastrophy in the end. So perfectly constructed.
And yeah after this book I read more by him and other German authors and I began writing own poems which got me even deeper in literature.
So Friedrich Schiller's was it for me...
Tyger, tyger burning bright..
The French poets I find difficult to read but I keep going back to them are Mallarmé, Saint-John Perse and Char.
Thank you for sharing! They are difficult, but I enjoy them too :)
"Ă la nue accablante tu"
âEach man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not dieâ
- Oscar Wilde, the ballad of reading gaol
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I loved Under Milk Wood! I thought it was endlessly enchanting - âthe only sea I saw was the seesaw sea with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.â
Endlessly enchanting is the best way of putting it :)
'And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.'
A.E. Housman
Do not ask of me, my love,
that love I once had for you.
There was a time when
life was bright and young and blooming,
and your sorrow was much more than any other pain.
Your beauty gave the spring everlasting youth;
your eyes, yes your eyes were everything,
all else was vain.
but there are other sorrows in the world than love,
and other pleasures, too.
Woven in silk and satin and brocade,
those dark and brutal curses of countless centuries:
bodies bathed in blood, smeared with dust,
sold from market-place to market-place,
bodies risen from the cauldron of disease
pus dripping from their festering sores-
my eyes must also turn to these,
You're beautiful still, my love
but I am helpless too;
for there are other sorrows in the world than love,
and other pleasures, too.
Do not ask of me, my love,
that love I once had for you!
-Faiz Ahmad Faiz, translated from Urdu.
I have always been charmed by Urdu poetry, but this one just shook me up.
Amazing. You've made me want to pursue more Urdu poetry. I can see why this one in particular shook you up!
One line per comment lol!!!!!
The cloud-cappâd towârs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON
The first and last lines of Yeats' "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven".
Hey there, can you tell me where I can find good poems? I mean on internet.
Scan the comments for this upload, and you'll find plenty of poetic gems.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
To be honest was hit my lyrics by the likes of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Richey Edwards long before any poetry.
Not poetry, but...
Scarlett O'Hara war eigentlich nicht schön zu nennen.
Like, damn, you can almost not say that you enjoy gone with the wind these days.... And rereading the book as an adult YIKES to so much of it. I read it the first time when I ws around 13 and didn't know much about American History at all so I lacked a lot of context, but somehow the style really captivated me and I can still open the book on any page and be immersed immediately. And dear GOD do I love story's about deeply flawed or straight up bad people.
Lord Byron was and still is my favourite poet. The Destruction of Sennacherib is my favourite. Need to read more of him to be honest. I read some of Chile Harold's Pilgramage...years ago.
Contemporary poetry is awful. We had to study the most dreadful contemporary poems in school. I learned to love the Modernist poets though, despite being a natural Romantic. Auden was my favourite out of all of them.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep... This one brings back memories. I used to teach English pronunciation, and used this poem - absolutely exhausted it! I love it :)
@@BenjaminMcEvoy Awwww! How wonderful! My grandmother, and mother, for that matter, were English majors at college and Frost was a favorite, and especially that poem, of my grandmother who shared it with all her grandchildren as we grew up. I just bought a beautiful illustrated copy of that poem for mine yesterday. I think it was especially special to Nana because she grew up in Maine and then moved to Vermont. She and my grandfather had a great deal of land, still in the family, on Lake Champlain. The land is equal parts open rolling hills, and lovely woods. Incidentally, her favorite book was Rabble In Arms by Kenneth Roberts about the American Revolutionary War....with you guys lol!!! I have her beloved clothbound copy of it. A treasure for sure.
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls upon a Floor