Poetry Finds Us

I often wonder why some people are excited about poetry and why others go no where near it or have given up on it. Some people simply shake their heads and regard poetry as a mystery. Now there is no doubt that poetry is important for me. I enjoyed much of it at school, though not always the learning of it. I doubt whether I would pass one of those tests at school that ask such direct questions about it, like what is the metaphor in the final line. What seemed to captivate me at school was the music of poetry, the fact that I would come away with a line buzzing round in my head -
"Bid me to live, and I will live,
Thy protestant to be."

I loved reading T S Eliot because the music of the words were so beautiful and catchy. I would walk around saying:

"I grow old, I grow old, I shall see the bottoms of my trousers rolled"
and
"In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo".

Of course I had no idea what the poetry meant. I used to quote Eliot so often, that I was once asked to give a talk on his poetry to a Rhodes" University group. I'm afraid that I had to duck out of that so fast because I had no idea of the meaning of his work. I would be much better now, I trust.

I suppose the truth of the matter is that poetry finds us and seduces us to follow its mystery. I remember when I was at junior school an actor came to our class and recited D H Lawrence's Snake to us. I was so transfixed by it, and so moved that I can now do the same thing. I love the sound of words and the way poetry slows things down and allows you to taste the sound of each word, and so enter an experience.

Bob