I love writing and reading and words, marvelous words. There's so much you can do with them. Yes, this makes me an unabashed geek; there are much worse things to geek out over.
I found the following poem at Poetry 180 - A poem a day for American high schools. We'll just gloss over the fact that I graduated high school in 1995. *g*
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
My favourite poem: I Do Not Love You by Pablo Neruda.
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,
I loved my friend.
P.S. - LOVE that Chantal Kreviazuk song. ♥
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
I love this one. I love the parsing and deconstructing of a poem vs. the beauty of just reading it and loving it.