I don’t read poetry much, I tend to find it dull, but now and again I’ll read some.

I do like pieces like these:

“Exultation is the going

Of an inland soul to sea

Past the houses, past the headlands

Into deep eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains

Can the sailor understand

The divine intoxication

Of the first league out from land?” — Emily Dickinson

“A short direction

To avoid dejection,

By variations

In occupations,

And prolongation

Of relaxation,

And combinations

Of recreations,

And disputation

On the state of the nation

In adaptation

To your station,

By invitations

To friends and relations,

By evitation

Of amputation,

By permutation

In conversation,

And deep reflection

You’ll avoid dejection.

Learn well your grammar,

And never stammer,

Write well and neatly,

And sing most sweetly,

Be enterprising,

Love early rising,

Go walk of six miles,

Have ready quick smiles,

With lightsome laughter,

Soft flowing after.

Drink tea, not coffee;

Never eat toffy.

Eat bread with butter.

Once more, don’t stutter.

Don’t waste your money,

Abstain from honey.

Shut doors behind you,

(Don’t slam them, mind you.)

Drink beer, not porter.

Don’t enter the water

Till to swim you are able.

Sit close to the table.

Take care of a candle.

Shut a door by the handle,

Don’t push with your shoulder

Until you are older.

Lose not a button.

Refuse cold mutton.

Starve your canaries.

Believe in fairies.

If you are able,

Don’t have a stable

With any mangers

Be rude to strangers.

Moral: Behave.” — Lewis Carrol

“Keep your whiskers crisp and clean.

Do not let the mice grow lean.

Do not let yourself grow fat

Like a common kitchen cat.

Have you set the kittens free?

Do they sometimes ask for me?

Is our catnip growing tall?

Did you patch the garden wall?

Clouds are gentle walls that hide

Gardens on the other side.

Tell the tabby cats I take

All my meals with William Blake,

Lunch at noon tea at four,

Served in splendor on the shore

At the tinkling of a bell.

Tell them I am sleeping well.

Tell them I have come so far,

Brought by Blake’s celestial cat,

Buffeted by wind and rain,

I may not get home again.

Take this message to my friends.

Say the King of Catnip sends

To the cat who winds his clocks

A thousand sunsets in a box,

To the cat who brings the ice

The shadows of a dozen mice

(serve them with assorted dips

and eat them like potato chips),

And to the cat who guards his door

A net for catching stars, and more

(if patience he abide):

Catnip from the other side.” — Nancy Willard

That kind of poetry.

*pops in*

I don’t particularly like poetry, so I’m really dreading the test I have to take on literature soon. It’s 35-45% poetry! *shudders*

…I inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house,

They are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster.

No matter which fumbled in ’41,

Or which the woebegone figure of fun.

I deduce how the faux pas came about,

It was clearly Jeeves’s afternoon out.

Yup…I love Ogden Nash. (Wodehouse too, while we’re on the topic).

Emily Dickinson, Tolkien, some T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Longfellow, and a host of other people who I can’t remember now are good too. *dashes off to look through poetry file*

Oh, and Delaney. (Cordelia here)

edit–Current favourite, by Emily Dickinson…

HE ate and drank the precious words,

A loosened spirit brings!

Not modern lit, though, Pip. Ancient lit, from all eras at once, all styles at once.

I guess I do like some poetry. *gets ready to duck* I like the nonsense stuff that Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein write! *ducks*

Alyosha – 1 day ago  » Oh, and Delaney. (Cordelia here)

Ah, yes Cordelia/Delaney, you should come in here more often, we’re talking about you.

My favorite Delaney piece is one she PMed me a long time ago (okay, so maybe June, 2007 isn’t all that long ago), after she’d stayed over with her grandparents. *fishes it out of folders*

Wishing well, grant me this:

Catch my fervent longing

Nod and smile; say you will

Grant my wish come morning.