Poetry in Motion

Poetry is not my strong suit, a phenomenon that runs in my family.  When I watch movies where the dad has a favourite poem I am dubious.  If there’s one thing I am pretty sure about it is that not one father of my acquaintance was (or is) sitting around reading poetry. They are either out playing hockey or watching some sports on TV.  My own father’s habit when he came home from work was to read the sports section first and then go through the whole newspaper front to back.  He said he got in the habit of reading the sports section first so that he would have something in common with his colleagues during the coffee breaks.  When he first came to Canada it took him a while to get through the whole newspaper because he was still acquiring his English vocabulary.  Later it was just habit.

            He would tell how he would skip over poems when he read books and my mother confessed that she did the same.  Guess who followed suit?  Every once in a while I will try to read the poems but it is painful.  I prefer to say it straight out.

            Here in my middle years I realize that I might be missing out so I have tried to take an interest in poetry yet I have to say that Emily Dickinson is still my favourite poet.  I simply enjoy her cadence.  I remember some of the poems from high school, like Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, and T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; not by heart of course, but the gist of the poem, because we thrashed through it for a day or two! 

So you may wonder why would I want to go to Windermere during my England tour when I wasn’t crazy about Wordsworth?  Two reasons, Beatrix Potter of course but also because Charlotte Bronte wrote to Wordsworth and thus he was part of her history.  Since then I have begun to read Wordsworth’s poetry to get a better appreciation for him.  I like the ideas within the poetry but I’m afraid I don’t find any sort of beat that resonates with me nor am I terribly enamoured of the rather leaden religious overtones of many of the pieces.  Perhaps because I am such a literal person I find allusions tiresome for the length of the piece.  Again, I have that strong streak of common sense that comes from my mother’s side of the family – trust me there isn’t any poetry in their practicality!

But let me not despair

There is poetry everywhere

In wind and flower and weather

Even in a little feather.    by Sanne