To Start

I don't recall ever reading a poem in school. I guess I must have, somewhere along the way, but I don't remember it. And until recently I never read poetry as an adult. Poems to me were nothing more than the slightly exasperating spaces in the New Yorker one glanced over uncomprehendingly while reading something else.

Then one day this winter I decided to read the poetry of John Keats. The chain of events leading up to that decision is long and complicated, so we'll leave it for now and simply say that it was a late Saturday night, December 8th in fact, when I opened my newly-purchased volume of his work. I didn't understand a lot of what I read, at least not in the way I'm used to understanding things. But what I read did absolutely speak to me and I spent the entire night wondering how I'd lived so long without that stunning use of language. I'm still wondering. It's kind of painful to think of.

I fell instantly in love with the sound of this one, and the more I read it, the more it means to me. (My apologies- TypePad looses the indentations)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon the more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.