Poets and Poetry..................

I am by no means a poet but I do like to rhyme. I have a blog of poems I have written, not good but recorded in hope of getting them printed for myself to keep. I am not having any luck with that at the moment. I need to find someone who will print them as is rather than scrambled up.
I do not normally care for poetry but there have been some in my life that has just grabbed me. The first I recall was "The Ballad of Hiawatha" by Longfellow. I found I liked a lot of his work as time went on. I have a few favourite Poets, ones I seem to enjoy. William Blake, he writes less complicated poetry but in school we had to learn "The Tyger" and that got my imagination going. I loved his description so keen and so insightful and then "The Lamb" both learned in school. Then again I have said all that before.
I have a couple of books that were my mums, one was "Shelley" and one "Wordsworth" except the inside of that book is about Colleridge, not Wordsworth. I don't understand.

My Mum had signed the inside of both books, and I tried to copy her. We learned cursive in school back then. I was practicing here, I could not even spell my address so could not have been very old when I wrote in the book.

There were some nice pictures in Shelley's book.

His life was certainly colourful as were his friends. His poetry was ok too. Well some of it is.
I prefer the poems about nature. I love the old fashioned ones of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow like "The Village Blacksmith" in many ways I am grateful for my English schooling. We learned or read a great variety of things from "The Illiad" to Shakespeare. The general knowledge comes in handy sometimes. We went to a farm that had demonstrations of things like broom making and Farrier work. In fact at the "Smithy" the man asked if anyone knew what the name of the tree was outside the Blacksmiths barn. Well his clue was what is it standing outside of? Well naturally "Under the spreading CHESTNUT tree, the village smithy stands" I knew that, no one else did.

The above book is one I enjoy because it has a good selection of my favourites. Knowing a little about a lot of things makes a person able to talk with almost anyone and sound somewhat intelligent. At least to have an idea of what they are talking about. Another one I like is "The Wreck of the Hesperas" by Longfellow. Some poems just have such an atmosphere that you can not help but remember them. At least parts of them and naturally those are the parts everyone remembers.
My dad sort of like poetry, he kept clippings of some of his favourites and I have those now. He liked things like "The Rubayat of Omar Kayam", I think he was fascinated by India after he made a stop there during the war so the East was something he was curious about, he was in Malaya for a time as well. Naturally he grew up when India was still a part of the Empire, and children who were English were often born in India and came to England for schooling. Same thing with Africa. Back in his day Egypt, Aden and that part of the world was highly influenced by the British Empire. In fact when I was working for NAAFI we were still heavily involved out there. Friends who worked with me at NAAFI transfered to Aden and Libya. They saw some of the world while I went home to have a baby.
George Gordon, Lord Byron.......She walks in Beauty, like the night. Always makes me think of Alex. I love the beauty of his words. Some people have that knack. Some people love words. Know how to use them effectively how to get across an idea or feeling while most of us just gabble on. They can paint pictures with words, it is a gift. For Byron and Shelley and his group it was a way of life, they were crazy, they used drugs, anything to enhance the image they were trying to create.
My Uncle Harold wrote poems, like me he was not that great but because HE wrote them I have kept them safe. Mine are written in a blog called "My Poems" my words as (not) unique as the title.