h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I like poetry. I know there are plenty of people who don't - perhaps they were stuffed with Shakespeare or entangled by Eliot? I have asked myself why I like poetry and decided it's not just a case of playing games with words. It's about understanding emotions and teasing out reactions to the perplexities of life. I wrote a whole article entitled 'Why Poetry?' A8688778, so I'm not going to repeat that. Here's a poem instead.

POETRY

Between silence and music
stillness and dance
comes poetry.

Between glances and whispers
fingers and lips
comes poetry.

Between seedtime and harvest
starlight and dawning
comes poetry.

Between sickness and parting
loss and acceptance
comes poetry.

Poetry is an odd thing indeed - I like some poems, that they resonate with me in some way, but quite a few others leave me unmoved, so I don't tend to seek out poetry books. I have gathered a few poems I really like, though, and I even managed to memorise Keats on Solitude

I really like your poem here - I like the repetition of the words and shapes, and I love the way you've captured impressive imagery in just four words in each verse

Why don't more people like poetry?
It's very odd as so many books for children are poems so you would expect everyone to grow up with poems, unless people feel poetry is somehow childish?

<BB<

I suspect most people say they don't like poetry because most of the 'poetry' they run across is really terrible. Our toleration for bad verse is somehow much lower than our ability to put up with awkward prose - I suspect because there's a danger that bad rhymes will get stuck in our heads and torment us.

One of the most painful sources of bad verse these days is church. Younger people seem to have a high tolerance for terrible song lyrics.

'Lord, I come, I confess,
Bowing here I find my rest
Without You I fall apart [What the heck?]
You're the One that guides my heart...'

I suspect these lyricists of using refrigerator magnet poetry sets...

If only song lyrics were as good as Nobel Prize for Literature winning songwriter Bob Dylan, with 'Ballad of a Thin Man' one of his most famous songs, which includes the moving, emotional verse:

Now, you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word 'Now'
And you say, 'For what reason?' and he says, 'How'
And you say, 'What does this mean?' and he screams back, 'You're a cow!'

They don't write songs like that any more...

<BB<

I used to make a British friend hopping mad by quoting Bob Dylan lyrics in an ironic voice.

Thanks SashaQ.

I suspect some modern poetry is just too difficult to access. And rhyming verse is easy to do badly and hard to do well.