I am of the mindset that these National [fill in the blank] Months are kind of silly. I mean, why do we need an African-American Heritage month, or an Asian-American or… anything else for that matter. Shouldn’t the celebration of a certain people’s heritage not be limited to one month a year? It’s very reductive, and it makes the idea behind it (the heritage or what have you) seem silly as well. But this idea is not limited ethnicities and nationalities. Along those lines, it turns out that April is National Poetry Month and the same ideas flood into my mind. Why do we need a special month for poetry? Shouldn’t it be a part of every month in some way or another?
Nevertheless, it does make for good blogging fodder and gives me a legitimate reason to talk about poetry, haha. As someone who has lived a life in the world of literature, or studying literature, I clearly have done my fair share of work with poetry. When I began my “life” in English, I really couldn’t tell you what I preferred: poetry or prose. But as I’ve gone along, I’ve discovered that I’m much more of a prose person. Works of fiction, novels and short stories, have had a greater effect on me and fascinated me more so than poetry.
That being said, I’m definitely not one of those people who can’t appreciate things outside of their comfort zone. While I want to work primarily with authors (rather than poets), I can understand and appreciate great poetry. It upsets me a little bit how people will close themselves off in situations like that, or that they think one form is clearly superior and that the other form doesn’t matter. Like I said, I prefer and enjoy prose, but I know that poems are great and important things as well.
Most of the poets I like shouldn’t come as any great surprise, based on the writers I talk a lot about: Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Langston Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Robert Creeley. Mostly 20th Century poets, either associated with the Beats or roughly tied to Modernism. But I think poetry is where I tend to be a little bit more diverse, and I’ve definitely enjoyed a lot of the poetry from the British Romantic Period- William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Blake. Within poetry, I find myself being more able to branch out and enjoy things that aren’t in the exact time periods that I prefer.
As I may have mentioned here, I even tried my hand at writing some poetry in the past. However, it was not very good and I decided against making a career as a poet. Poetry is a strange thing, and perhaps it is that side of it that makes me wary. I mean, I understand how you (literally) write prose, but poetry? It’s something totally different.
But there are definitely plenty of poems I enjoy and think are incredible. I thought I’d tell you some of them and I’d recommend that you check them out, if you haven’t read them already either
here or
here:
“The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliott
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg
“I Know a Man” by Robert Creeley
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” “Ode to Psyche” “Ode on Melancholy” and “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
“Lines Written in Early Spring” “Expostulation and Reply” “The Tables Turned” “The Last of the Flock” and “The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth
“Ozymandias” “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” “Mont Blanc” “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark” by Percy Shelley
Montage of a Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
And I thought I’d share my absolutely favorite poem here as well, and it’s “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg:
What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
But what are your thoughts on poetry? And what are some of your favorite poems? Are you more of a poetry or prose person? Let the discussion begin!
