The Beauty Of It All

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that's best of dark and night
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."

I love this poem by George Gordon, Lord Byron. I love many poems. I learned numerous rousing poems like The Highwayman (my romantic favorite!), Gunga Din, Danny Deever, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Lots of eerie, odd poems like The Jabberwocky and The Raven, Annabel Lee and others.

I studied poetry one semester in college. It was less than stellar (my professor thought that I, alone among a class of folk who had memorized the entire canon of poetry from Homer to Ginsberg, was a cerebral lightweight). I don't ever recall any poetry work in high school, although I have a vague memory of attempting to write haiku.

Nonetheless, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti, Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wadsworth, even Dante and his ilk, are some of my favorite authors among all those fiction types, historians, biographers and romance writers.

Why?

Well, maybe it is because it is the one form where words are used in concert to conjure up whole worlds in just a few short lines. Where words can be wild, witty, wonderful and evocative - creating an emotional response in a reader that is sharp, immediate and lasting.

I'd bet cash money that nearly everyone you could find and ask - could recite a line or two (at least) of their favorite poem, or one that has always stuck with them. And most couldn't quote a line of a book of any other sort.

Now THAT's magic!

So. What's your favorite poem? Is it a little ode - about nightengales or urns? Is it a strident scream of protest or a witty little ditty on the existence of the ant? Or a yearning, passionate plea for love - or death - by an eccentric lady named Emily?