When I was young I was painfully shy…actually, I was whatever is beyond painfully shy.  I walked the halls of middle and most of high school looking at the floor.  I rarely tripped but I had many near misses with columns and basketball players.  As a card-carrying introvert, I poured out my feelings and thoughts into journals.  In middle school, my English teacher (who was young and handsome, if I remember correctly) did a unit on poetry and I fell in love with it.  I began to write it and it was very bad, but thinking in rhythms and rhymes eventually became second nature.  I wrote throughout college, as well, and even had some poems published in my college literary magazine.  When I moved to Atlanta and joined a new church, I discovered a whole new level of faith and my writing jumped back into high gear.  As I’ve gotten older and developed more of an out-going personality (well, any personality would have been an improvement), my writing has been left by the wayside, which is unfortunate.  I think back to those early poems and stories wistfully and hope to someday pick it up again.  I  have uploaded some of my (less embarrassing) poems into an “ebook”.  If you are interested in peeking into my sometimes strange mind, click on the link below.

Open Windows: Poetry and Stories

I do have some favorite poems and poets.  Rainer Maria Rilke has several poems that I love. This one doesn’t have a title but it’s about an imaginary creature.  You, Darkness is a hauntingly beautiful poem.  This is not a poem but rather a quote from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. As a tried and true fantasy lover, the imagery is lovely! Love has always been something I think about…probably because I would like to experience being in love some day.  Rilke captures what I’d like to imagine it feels like in his poem, Love Song.

Percy Bysshe Shelley is another great poet.  Here are some of my favorites: I Arise from dreams of thee; Eyes.

Shelley’s good friend Byron has a couple of poems I really like: Roll on Thou Deep and Dark Blue Ocean; She Walks in Beauty;  I Saw Thee Weep.

Wordsworth: Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood; Composed on Westminster Bridge.

e.e. cummings: Somewhere I have Never Travelled.

Matthew Arnold: Longing.

And, of course, Shakespeare: 116th Sonnet; 29th Sonnet; My Mistress’ eyes are like the sun.

Many of these poems are from the sound track of a wonderful television series from the 90s, “Beauty and the Beast”.  Ron Pearlman played the beast and read poetry to his Catherine (the beauty).  His voice is just lovely!  You can listen to samples of the soundtrack at Amazon.

Happy Poetry Month!!!