This week: Down A Poetical Memory Lane Edited by: eyestar~*  
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 Happy Spring everyone! I hope you enjoyed National Poetry Month.  I am back as a guest editor this week with a little trip down memory lane....My poetical memory lane! Maybe it will stir up yours. 
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It has been a busy month and to top it off it was National Poetry Month! so I hope you all had fun reading and writing poetry. This month was also my birthday and I did some reminiscing on my first poetic experiences. Do you recall your first introduction to poetry or recall favourites as a young person?
 My first recollection was when my mom recited or read Nursery Rhymes when I was very little. I think we even had Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book.  Remember Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill? There were many that I did not know the meaning or English references but they were fun and easy to recite.
 My next memory was receiving a book called "A Child's Garden of Verses" by R. L. Stevenson for my birthday. I still can recite my favourite poem, "The Swing":
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
Source: A Child's Garden of Verses
Such a simple song of childhood joy of swinging that engaged me. I loved to swing and my dad built a wooden set out in our yard. We lived in the country so it was so fun flying up to the clouds, watching cows in the field beside our fence and also jumping off! LOL A taste of freedom! The poem brings me back there!
It is cool I knew this author as a poem before I found his adventure tales!
 Do you have a poem from childhood that took you away or took your fancy?
 In grade school I remember we had to learn to recite as a chorus George Cooper's poem, "Come, Little Leaves".
Come, Little Leaves
“Come, little leaves,” said the wind one day,
“Come o'er the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.”
Soon as the leaves heard the wind’s loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
singing the glad little songs they knew.
“Cricket, goodbye, we’ve been friends so long;
Little brook, sing us your farewell song;
Say you are sorry to see us go;
Ah, you will miss us, right well we know.
"Dear little lambs in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
fondly we watched you in vale and glade;
Say, will you dream of our loving shade?”
Dancing and whirling, the little leaves went;
Winter had called them, and they were content;
soon, fast asleep in their earthy beds,
The snow laid a coverlid over their heads.
The only lines that pop to mind sometimes are in the first verse. I was engaged by the vivid personification of nature and that one could talk to it. I used to walk a lot and it did not seem odd to me to converse with nature and listen or imagine a response? Do you talk to trees? 
I am sure most are familiar with other poets I mentioned here but even I had to look up Cooper!
George Cooper (1840 – 1927) was born in New York City and began writing as a child. Gosh, his poems were published in magazines by the age of 16. He practiced law, but decided take up the writing career. He wrote a number of hymns and much of his work was for children. Stephen Foster set many of George’s lyrics like "Sweet Genevieve" to music. I wonder if he knew his poems would turn to songs?  Some of the child poems and songs are still popular today.
I also remember parts of Joyce Kilmer's Poem as my dad used to tell us about Sudbury, where our relatives lived. "Only God can Make a Tree!" The added joke for the city was :" He's Never tried in Sudbury." It was an old saying as the mining town had so much sludge and rock pile it looked pretty barren! We visited there often as kids and got to know the joke well and for me, how sad it seemed! I am not sure where it began.
I loved trees so I did have to look up the poem: "Trees" so it was added to my favourites then. The last line makes fun of himself as a poet!
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
 Jumping to high school, this poem by the famous Alfred, Lord Tennyson. poet Laureate for most of Queen Victoria's time, appeared on an exam and the first verse struck me enough to make it stick in my memory. The mood and theme were so vivid as well.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
It was written during early 1835 and published in 1842. The poem is an elegy that describes his feelings of loss after his best boyhood friend, Arthur Henry Hallam died and his feelings of isolation while at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire.
I can't recall another exam poem though I remember it was something about a flower and the question was to give your opinion on the meaning. Who knew that one's opinion meant to give the teacher wanted to hear. I was reading with a 16 year old mind not one who might see a deep metaphor~ LOL I mean we did not study the author or his poetry so how would one say for certain what it meant?
Lucky I loved poetry or I might have been turned off... what a downer!
 Have you ever had such an experience...even with one of your own poems? Folks do tend to hear and see from their own perspective, which can change over time. I think kids might have been turned off poetry if it was expected they had to know what it exactly meant instead of enjoying its tone, sentiment, vision and flow until something stirs in them. 
 Another poem from high school that stuck in my mind, likely because I spent a lot of time studying it for a project!  William Blake wrote "The Tyger" and it was the first of his poems I heard. It was an interesting journey into Blake's ideals. I had to read on, of course, and found some other amazing works! I always enjoy inspirational and philosophical poems.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I later learned that this was one of his most famous and remembered poems. 
Whew! That was a memory trip. Why these came to mind is a mystery as I have read and liked many poems since then!*bismile* I found it interesting to see which poems really do pop up from these early days. I still like to read and write about nature, inspiration, philosophy and the magical. Too weird that I do not recall fantasy poems from those early years as I like the ephemeral realms as well as child like poems. 
 How about you?
How have your early revelations of poetry influenced your own writing or reading choices?
Have fun just chilling or "noodling" as spring springs up! 
Thanks for checking in!
eyestar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred,_Lord_Tennyson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cooper_(poet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
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Do you have a favourite or memorable poem from your childhood?
How has early experiences with poetry influenced your writing or reading poems?
Hail and thanks for cool comments and poems to these readers of my "Poetry Newsletter (March 30, 2022)" about Nova Scotia inspiring poetry!
Elfin Dragon-finally published 
It's very rare that I use an actual place in my poetry. I'm more of an emotional poet. Though when atrocities, terrorism, or other emotional things at particular places move me - I do use places in my poetry.
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Awesome!
Monty 
Poetry has it's own language and it says so much in a few lines that in a story would fill a page. Louis L'Amour wrote LIFE: I dream and my dreams are all broken; I love and my loving is vain... I speak and the words are all spoken, I look and see nothing but pain. 4 lines.
Wow! Deep thoughts and so clear in a few short lines. Sad too. Thanks for sharing.
JCosmos 
Here are my Berkeley-themed poems of place. I grew up there in the 60s and I go back home every few years.
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Thanks so much for sharing this.
Louise Wiggins is Elizabeth
Thank you for the poems about Nova Scotia. When I visited, I picked up a copy of Evangeline and read it aloud as I rode along. It is one of my all-time favorite poems, and I love Elizabeth Bishop, too. I love Nova Scotia and wish to go back to visit again one day.
You are welcome. I just moved here last year and haven't been all around yet due to covid etc! It has a unique vibe. Thanks for sharing. |
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Poetry: April 27, 2022 Issue [#11328]
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