The Wonderful World of Poetry!

Poetry is a beautiful rendition of your thoughts and feelings all poured out onto paper. Just as artists put their emotions into paintings, and singers scream their pain into a microphone, poets and writers look deep inside themselves and spill out all of their disposition, which is the yarn ball we call our feelings. As Leonard Cohen once beautifully explained, “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” Here are some of the most evocative, expressive, and compelling poems made by some of the most brilliant and beautiful minds.

In this poem, the author talks about how people don’t live up to their own expectations. We tell ourselves to have high hopes and big dreams, but do we really follow through? Do we really listen to ourselves?

Poem from;Dead Poets Society

-Tod Anderson

We are dreaming of a tomorrow

and tomorrow isn’t coming

We are dreaming of a glory that

we really don’t want

We are dreaming of a new day

when the new day’s here already

We are running from the battle

when it’s one that must be fought

And still we sleep

We are listening for the calling

but never really heeding

Hoping for the future when the

future’s only plans

Dreaming of the wisdom that we

are dodging daily

Praying for a savior when

salvation’s in our hands

And still we sleep

And still we sleep

And still we pray

And still we fear

And still we sleep

The second poem in this list explains how a person thinks of their loved one as a puzzle piece. It’s not artwork without all the pieces, so it’s not a life without you.

A Reminder

-Beau Taplin

She said,

“Never forget me”

As if the coast

Could forget the ocean

Or the lung

Could forget the breath

Or the earth

Could forget the sun

The poem “Sea of Strangers”, talks about the longing someone feels when they love another person. How their heart is not theirs, but belongs to the other. Their mind is not theirs, but belongs to the other. They turn into the sun, the other is the moon and one cannot exist without the other.

Sea of Strangers

In a sea of strangers,

you’ve longed to know me.

Your life spent sailing

to my shores.

The arms that yearn

to someday hold me,

will ache beneath

the heavy oars.

Please take your time

and take it slowly;

As all you do

will run its course

And nothing else

can take what only-

was always meant

as solely yours.

Benedict Smith perfectly writes about how we as writers don’t really put down all our thoughts and emotions because it wouldn’t turn into masterpieces like others. They would be jumbled up and not make any sense, which is the mind of an author.

-Benedict Smith

I wish I wrote the way I thought;

Obsessively,

Incessantly,

With maddening hunger.

I’d write to the point of suffocation.

I’d write myself into

Nervous breakdowns,

Manuscripts spiralling out

Like tentacles into abysmal nothing

And I’d write about you

A lot more than I should.

In this poem, Edgar Allen Poe explores the idea of death and how it illustrates the whole concept of being alone. The two aren’t that different, and your life constructs itself in waiting for death.

Alone

-Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were-I have not seen

As others saw-I could not bring

My passions from a common spring-

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow-I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone-

And all I lov’d-I lov’d alone-

Then-in my childhood-in the dawn

Of a most stormy life-was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which blinds me still-

From the torrent, or the fountain-

From the red cliff of the mountain-

From the sun that ‘round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold-

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by-

From the thunder, and the storm-

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view-

This poem by Franz Kafka tells about how each person has a different and raw human experience and thoughts. We each have personal ideas, opinions, and issues that are solely ours and no one else’s.

-Franz Kafka

I am always trying to

communicate something

incommunicable,

To explain something

inexplicable,

To tell about something

i only feel

in my bones and which can only

be experienced in those bones.

In this other poem from Dead Poets Society, the author describes feeling unaccomplished with themselves. That they have not lived up to the goals they have set and need to push themselves more to reach those goals.

Poem from;Dead Poets Society

-Charlie Dalton

Laughing, crying,

tumbling, mumbling

Gotta do more,

gotta be more

Chaos screaming,

chaos dreaming

Gotta do more,

Gotta be more.

Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”, is a famous elegy that mourns the loss of Abraham Lincoln after his assasination.

O Captain! My Captain!

-Walt Whitman

O captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather’d every rack,

The prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel,

The vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! Heart! Heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O captain! My captain! Rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths-

For you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass,

Their eager faces turning

Here captain! Dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer,

His lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm,

He has no pulse or will;

The ship anchor’d safe and sound,

Its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

This poem by Robert Frost explains how temporary some things can be. Many things seem to end fast, like a bouquet of flowers, a sunset, or your childhood.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

-Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.