Hello Folks,
This week''s word at Every Inchie Monday is poetry.
I think the Vogon Poetry segment is my favourite part of all the Hitch Hiker's books, closely followed by the discussion of how to use verb tenses with the advent of time travel.
I've spent good portion of my life studying and teaching poetry. Using Poetry Appreciation Chairs to impose excruciating pain somehow tickles my fancy, as I am well aware that poetry seems like a form of punishment to some people. When marking (often bad) essays on poetry I would hear the phrase "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor" circulating through my mind.
Now how to depict poetry? Not easy. I chose to use the first words of Wordsworth's famous, and easily accessible, poem from the Romantic Era (1804):
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
And because the poem features daffodils, and mine are just
peaking their little heads out, I thought I would quill one:
I wish I could teach everyone to love and appreciate poetry the way I do, but it is, unfortunately, a daunting and probably unattainable task. Poetry, however, is NOT TORTURE!
