fandomhigh | Poetry 101, Monday, 8/13

"Eight weeks," Romeo said once class was assembled, "is not enough time to teach you much at all about poetry. The most I can hope to have done is to give you some taste for it -- a morsel from a feast I hope will sustain you all your lives."

"My question this week is both very easy and very difficult. We've all read, I hope, a sufficiency of poems -- some in class, some outside class. What I hope we may have teased out is what makes a poem immortal. Is it the language? The imagery? The rhythm of the words? Is it style -- or is it substance? Do we like 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' because we think we are Prufrock, or because of the way his tale is told?"

He shrugged. "I've no idea. Both, I would imagine. But I want to hear what you think. Why is your favorite poem your favorite poem? And what is that favorite poem, to start with?"

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What is your favorite poem? Why?

"There's a poem by Emily Dickenson," Evan shared, "called 'I'm Nobody! Who Are You?' And... I really like that one. It's short and seems kind of silly, but it says a lot if you take the time to actually pay attention to what it's saying."

He cleared his throat.

"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!"

Poetry 101, Monday, 8/13

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