Sunday, July 25, 2010

Poem of the day: on poets

Absolutely fresh the way this poem by Prageeta Sharma begins:
Do not fall in love with a poet
they are no more honest than a stockbroker.
(Do you have a stockbroker? If you do,
they are with you because you have one.)
If you think that they are more sensitive because they care about language
pay attention to how they use language.
Are you included? Are you the "you"?
Or are you a suggestion?
Are you partially included as a suggestion?
Read the entire poem; it is neat.

I enjoyed reading it.  But, will I be labeled a dull boring old-timer if I admit to preferring the rhyme and storytelling in poems?  Like, ahem, the following one, which certainly wasn't authored by the Bard of Wasilla, but that other real bard :)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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