It's time again for the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews.…
Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favorite Poems
It’s time again for the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Today’s topic is: Favorite poems, short stories or novellas
I decided to go with poems, since I can actually choose just a couple. Short stories and novellas would be legion…
I’m not a big fan of poetry. I absolutely do not understand poetry that doesn’t rhyme… to me that’s just flash fiction. I know, I’m very plebian. What can I say? I’m about as deep as a wading pool…
Growing up, I had these orange books that were part of some children’s treasury. I gave them to my brother when he had kids and am SO sorry I did, as I really wish I’d been able to pass them to my own child. These books were the intro to so many things for me (there were something like 30 books), including poetry. And my absolute favorite poem then was The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I thought it was both wildly romantic and tragically sad.
Then, in the 80s I fell madly in love with the movie, Xanadu (don’t judge me…). At the end, when Kira quotes from the poem, Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I resolved then and there to memorize it in its entirety.
I did.
I’m not sure what purpose it served, but I was young and in love (with the movie, seriously, I was obsessed with it).
And, really, it’s a pretty darn good poem.
But otherwise, the depth of my poetry appreciation is probably, Trees by Joyce Kilmer:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
I remember having to memorize Trees in grade school for Arbor Day. https://pmprescott.blogspot.com/2020/06/wc-061020.html
How did I forget The Highwayman… OMG… I cried as the “musket shattered the moonlight, shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.”.. .sigh…. so very very sad.
XANADU!!! I now have that playing in my head. I won’t judge.
Yes, that’s a lovely poem!
Good ones! Unfortunately, when I read the title The Highwayman, I thought of the musical group and got an ear worm. Lol! Still good ones.
Yes, The Highwayman! I read that when I was really young and no one ever seems to know it!
Oh I remember trees. Loved Xanadu! Wasn’t familiar with the other’s. Enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing. Here’s mine. https://www.tenastetler.com/favorite-poems-short-stories-or-novellas-lsrs-wednesdays-blog-challenge/
I loved Xanadu back in the day, too, but mainly because of Olivia Newton-John. <3 Funny, I also memorized Kubla Kahn but for my freshman English class. My teacher was a bit surprised because everyone else was going with Shel Siverstein. LOL
My list
“Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree.:
That’s simply brilliant.
Thanks for coming by my blog today.
Poetry is very much not my area — I don’t dislike, I just… never acquired a taste for it? — but I would like to put in a good for Xanadu. That is a movie that was absolutely unashamed to be exactly what it was, and it was fun.
I will never judge you for loving Xanadu! How can you not love a film with singing and dancing and muses and our very own (I’m Australian) Livvy!
Kubla Khan is majestic. Coleridge wrote some great poems.
I had never read Trees, but I loved it.