13 Comments
User's avatar
Elizabeth Godfrey's avatar

Ha! Poetry doesn't have to be so snooty, does it? Both my parents loved and could recite poems from Goethe, Burns, Frost or Longfellow and I grew up thinking poetry was approachable and musical.

Expand full comment
Richard Goodman's avatar

Lucky you!

Expand full comment
Tom Messner's avatar

Sonnets are the best. Only 14 lines, a shade more than Haiku. I chose to memorize some Gerard Manley Hopkins and every Fall and Spring on the golf course I say out loud the words to SPRING AND FALL TO A YOUNG CHILD.......and grieve each time I come to the last line....

Expand full comment
Richard Goodman's avatar

I like Hopkins a lot. Great line of his from "The Wreck of the Deutschland": "Hope had grown grey hairs."

Expand full comment
Catherine Lane Diehl's avatar

Musical like Dorothy Parker’s “The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk”. Helps make my day sweeter!

Expand full comment
Richard Goodman's avatar

I love Dorothy, but don't know that one!

Expand full comment
Catherine Lane Diehl's avatar

I read it...liked it and later realized that it is a song. Live and (to) learn!

Expand full comment
Marina Osipova's avatar

Oh, I feel this veiled anger in her poems all the time. For a cause as well.

Expand full comment
Marina Osipova's avatar

I have never “heard” you being so angry, Richard. The only poet I like and “understand” is Alexander Pushkin. (smile) I hope no one will name me . . . Well, you wrote the “appropriate words.”

Expand full comment
Richard Goodman's avatar

Angry for a cause, Marina!

What about Anna Akhmatova?

Expand full comment
olivier's avatar

"Si la société évacue la poésie comme mode d'expression non productif, c'est peut-être que la poésie est un foyer de contestation, un acte de résistance, une incompatibilité fondamentale avec le système dominant ?" (Jean Rouaud)

Expand full comment
Richard Goodman's avatar

Political! How did you find that?!?

Expand full comment
olivier's avatar

Yes! Just reading about Rouaud, this morning, one article had this quote. :)

Expand full comment