Poetry and I have an estranged relationship; sometimes we understand each other and communicate well, but other times we fight and struggle with misunderstanding. I've had a love for the English language for years and I've always loved to read anything from the back of cereal boxes to the complete works of Jane Austen. I've had some extreme favorites (A Wrinkle in Time and The Screwtape Letters) and some extreme hatred (Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea) but most things I've read fall into simpler like or dislike categories. Honestly, most of the poetry I read in highschool fell into the dislike category. Don't get me wrong, there were definitely poems that I liked, poems that made me weep, and poems that made me angry.
I didn't really fall in love with poetry until my senior year of highschool when my sister, Emily, and I watched a movie entitled "Bright Star" which depicted the tragic life of John Keats and his passionate love for his neighbor, Fanny Brawne. The movie made me curious (and made me bawl like an infant) about the poetry of the man who loved so deeply and died so young. I did whatt any eighteen year old nerd would and made a trip to the library where I checked out The Complete Works of John Keats and started reading. I ravenously devoured the poems and letters the book contained, but I was enchanted by one poem above all the others. The poem (technically a sonnet) is where the movie gets its title, "Bright Star". The poem is not long or complicated, but I think it's one of the most beautiful things ever written. I could try to describe it to you, but I think it'll be more effective if you read the words yourself.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
I know many people more scholarly than I will disagree with my love of this poem and Keats in general, but Keats helped me broaden my outlook on literature. If it had not been for Keats, I might still be a hater of poetry today. What's your favorite poem and why?
