The Rose That Grew from the Concrete is a poem that doesn’t quite represent a “Rap” or anything of the Rap genre. Through this poetry, 2Pac tells us information about himself that many people even fans don’t necessarily know or understand. He writes about a rose that proved nature’s law wrong. He suggests that no body even cares and points out to all of us that people are looking and caring about the wrong things. This poem can mean many things. It reflects on Tupac himself, as he was an African-American who came from poverty and the ghetto. He proved nature’s law wrong and evolved into a rich successor of music. 2Pac is the rose and he sprouted out of nowhere. People should recognize this and acknowledge where he came from and how he got where he is. Another piece of poetry that Tupac shows us his sense of a “Rose that grew from the concrete” is a poem called “Life through My Eyes”.

Certainly we could see life through Shakur’s eyes from his poem “Life through My Eyes”. Through out the poem 2Pac draws a vivid picture for us. He starts off the poem with “Life through my bloodshot eyes” which right away tells us about how his childhood was. By telling us his eyes are blood shot, we can infer that it’s pretty much normal to get high or drunk where he’s from. “Poverty, murder, violence” pretty much defines how his life used to be. I see how bad his childhood was and it certainly makes me appreciate everything I have a lot more. Tupac expresses his pain and says how he wont stop unless he “puts an end 2 all of this”. This poem’s a statement and an attempt to get the world to acknowledge the problems in the projects. With all these circumstances you wouldn’t think Shakur would be a soft sensitive person but of course there’s a lot unknown about Mr.Shakur.

2Pac has a reputation as this tuff thug with no heart but we see his soft side in this poem. As titled “Sometimes I Cry”, this poem reflects how Shakur feels on the inside regardless of what is shown on the outside. He tells how he cries and unfortunately there are many reasons why. He tells us how when he cries he’d like to cry to his true friends but “who do you know that stops that long to help another carry on.” “The world moves fast and it would rather pass you by than 2 stop and see what makes you cry its painful and sad and sometimes when I cry no one cares about why.” Tupac dedicates this poem to himself and shows everyone out there that even tough, thug, gangster, 2Pac ,Tupac –whatever you want to call him, has a soft side. He feels pain just as much as anyone else and perception isn’t always true. Living with much grief all around him Tupac chose his role models very carefully, one of them being Huey Newton.

Growing up Newton was a big icon for Tupac. When Tupac was just 18 he lost one of his biggest role models, Huey Newton. Shakur expressed his feelings during the loss in his poem “Fallen Star” in which he dedicated to Newton. Shakur speaks about what Newton’s goals were and his attempts in life. “They wanted 2 c your lifeless corpse this way you cannot alter the course of ignorance that they have set.” Even through such simple words, 2pac expresses his political views in the purity of poetry. Newton tried to defend the African Americans and their way of life even though there was mass racism against them.

Unfortunately, at a young age 2pac became a “Fallen Star” which led to “The Event of My Demise.” Coincidentally, 2pac wrote the poem “In the Even of My Demise” only a few months before his actual death. In this poem, 2pac hopes that his death will eventually have meaning and bring change upon the rest of the world. As stated in the poem, 2pac expresses “I hope I die for a principle.” He tells us how he hopes his life will be a tool to a better day, sending the world a wake up call upon all the racism and stereotypes that occurred during his lifetime. Although 2pac was just 25, he wanted the world to know what he wished for “In the Event of [his] Demise.”

As expressed throughout many of 2pac’s poems, “change” was a goal he wished to accomplish during his lifetime. He hoped that racism, and prejudice views against Blacks would come to an end. In one of his songs he says: “I see no changes, all I see is racist faces. Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races.” The surrounding world is filled with too much hate against a race that did nothing to deserve the way they are treated. Only with “changes” and equal treatment between blacks and whites, can the world become a better place.

In the poem "the road not taken" Plato's ideas about human nature fits in with the difficulty the narrator faces in choosing which path to go down. He seems to experience an internal conflict between the different desires of his soul. He desired to go down the path which was "grassy and wanted wear" even though the other path was "just as fair" showing his reason in choosing which path to stick to. There are also some Platonic ideas that fit in with Larkin's poem "this be the verse". You can ask yourself what makes Larkin create such a rebellious poem. You could associate it with his human nature which he would have derived from his soul in an earlier life or you could blame it on his nurture, blaming his upbringing as the reason why he has written such a poem. If you like Plato are a dualist then you could blame his behaviour to his soul. However although the previous idea may fit in with the poem, Larkin contradicts Plato's ideas of humans being "social creatures". Larkin in the poem refuses help from his parents and encourages you not to have children. This goes against Plato's idea of humans being social as Larkin opposes cooperation with your parents and reproduction.

Hobbes analyses human nature in a rather negative and unflattering way. He basically says that our nature is to only think of ourselves, saying that we are egotists. Some of Hobbes' ideas also fit into both poems. In the poem "the road not taken" Frost describes how he took one path over the other as it had a "better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear". This shows how Frost judged the paths on their appearance, eventually going down the nicer looking path because of its attractive resources, much like what Hobbes discusses in the quest for felicity. This decision over two paths also fits in with his ideas of two sorts of rationality, as Frost rationally chooses to go down the path less trodden as if to even out the difference between the ruggedness of the paths. However if all the people chose the same path as he had that path would become much more worn than the other. Hobbes' ideas also fit in with Larkin's poem "this be the verse". Larkin seems to write the poem egotistically as if he is only looking for self preservation. Larkin also seems to want to acquire felicity as he uses strong language and bold statements to try and show his power over the readers as if he is trying to gain felicity, much like Hobbes emphasised how humans were in a constant quest for felicity.

Rousseau on the other hand thought Hobbes was wrong about human nature, agreeing that the primary motivation was self-preservation but added that this was not everything about being human. Hobbes agrees with the notion of living more "in harmony with nature". This can be seen in "the road not taken" poem as Frost, when choosing the paths, respects the nature of the paths and chose the path which "wanted wear" as if he is working with nature. Also later on in the poem he tells us how he took the path less travelled by and "that has made all the difference" which sounds like the idea of self-improvement. Like Rousseau suggests that one human drive is self-improvement, Frost ended up being pleased that he chose the path less trodden as if he had gained life experience. Some of Rousseau's ideas are also shown in Larkin's poem "this be the verse". Larkin displays his innovative ideas on how you should forget family life as it "fucks you up" and that you should not have any kids yourself. This advice that he is offering us shows us that he is trying to not just improve himself but also improving humanity as a whole with his strange innovations. Even if the innovations are pretty odd he still displays advice on how you should live your life, showing that he is trying to improve humanity.

Both poets show ideas that are similar to Hobbes in the way that they both demonstrate ideas that could be associated with the quest for felicity. In the poem "the road not taken" Frost talks about how he chose one path over the other, showing his prejudice for not choosing the other because it did not have green grass. This could be seen as selfish as he was merely concerned with choosing the path which he preferred. This same selfishness, associated with the egotistic ideas of Hobbes, can be seen in the poem "this be the verse" by Larkin. Larkin displays his thoughts on how parents "fuck you up" and how the concept of being with your parents or family messes you up. This shows a concern for only himself as he does not think about how his parents might feel, which could mean that he is selfish. However the poem by Frost does give reasons for his choice whereas Larkin only states that you should avoid family life without giving sufficient reason.

Some of the ideas of Plato, Hobbes and Rousseau fit in well with the poems on their ideas about human nature. However the poems also give their own views on the "human condition" as well. Larkin's poem seems to have the ideas of the quest of felicity which Hobbes was associated with and Frost's poem can be associated well with the works of Plato with the desires of the soul in choosing the right path. Between the two poems the ideas of the human condition contrasted a lot with each other, with hardly any similarities between the two poems. However you can interpret them to adapt to Hobbes idea on the quest for felicity which both poems seem to display ideas about.

The Highwayman

For those of us who love a touch of romance and tragedy, this poem gives more than enough of it. Unfortunately, the book's preview is nothing like the poem. I wouldn't advise you to read Kiss of The Highwayman unless you want to.

Alfred Noyes' poem is the perfect example of a wonderfully written poem. It rhymes, it builds, it masterfully uses repetition… what can I say? It's a masterpiece. Alfred Noyes, born in 1880, published this poem in Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, in 1907. It is arguably his most beloved poem.

The Lady of Shallot

This beautiful poem is told in true Tennyson fashion. It is a tale of King Arthur's court, and is filled with the magic that comes with tales such as these. It is a special treat to read again.

Where you can view the poem with art work. It is a lovely experience. Tennyson taught me the art of using figurative language. He also helped me develop pacing and rhyme.

The Raven

This poem and I go way back. We met in the sixth grade and I've frequently revisited it since. I love Poe. He may have been a drunk in his day but I still think he was an awesome writer. He's amazing, dark yes, but also amazing. I recommend Poe to all aspiring poets. This sadly tragic and painful poem helped me understand the importance of images. Just read it and see what effect the “shadow” in the last stanza has on you!

Annabel Lee

Ah, sweet and melancholy. Poe managed to capture a broad range of human emotions in his poem. Anger, love, passion, and sorrow, all drip from his pen, masterfully arranged by his genius. If you want to learn to move the heart of your reader, or if you'd like to know how the masters did it, this is the poem to read.

In Memoriam

image source

I recommend that you read the whole thing. I remember stumbling upon it in my AP English textbook, my beloved Norton. At once I was captured by the pain and the passion, the sorrow, and the anguish that Tennyson poured out onto those pages. Each poem breathed with life I'd never seen before. I want to share a little bit of his poem here,

“I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel:
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within” (Tennyson, 5). Can you feel that? That is pure beauty.

I encourage all aspiring poets to study these writers. Study all of the poets you can get your hands on, but especially these; these are the ones that will be your foundation; these are the ones that will make others wonder at your mastery of the language, at your instinctive pacing and internal rhyme, at your ability to let the poem run wild and yet have it stream from the paper and to the reader like a powerful beam of sunlight into one central direction. Happy reading! Till next time.

There are occasions when a poem without any rhyme or scansion pattern is justified, such as when it presents a "word-picture". Such word-pictures are the basis of, and justification for, Japanese haiku. The haiku in Japan consists of 17 "syllables" in three groups: 5, 7 and 5. I say "syllables" in quotes since they are not the exact equivalent of the term in the English language. Japanese is a syllabic language and its writing systems reflect that.

Here is a well-known haiku by a famed Japanese poet, Basho.

furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto

(old pond, frog jumps, sound of water)

Many English poets have merely taken the 5,7,5 syllable concept and used that aspect alone in their works to call their poems "haiku". Is that OK? Not!

Here's a typical example of what is commonly called a "haiku" in English:

It is your birthday.

Let's take the dog for a walk

and enjoy ourselves.

Not the same thing at all; merely a lazy way of claiming that one has written a "poem".

So what's happening in the world of "Poetry"?

I theorise that it comes down to current western attitudes, the overwhelming expression of the "I want it now" culture and big business support for fulfilling this wish - "You can have it now".

Want a car? No need to save, no deposit required. No effort nor patience needed. We'll even fill in the form for you.

A house? Let's see! You're young and might well progress in life. Deposit? No need for that! Heck, we'll lend you 110% of the purchase cost if you want. It'll save you waiting till you can afford decent furniture.

Want to write a poem? No need to work at it. Just throw some words on a piece of paper. Better yet a computer screen. Call it a poem and nobody will challenge you!

One cloudless, moonless night in midsummer, 2005, I'd gone out into the garden to feed our dogs before retiring to bed. I looked up at the sky and was struck by the appearance of the Milky Way, brighter than I'd ever seen it before. As I gazed at all those stars I wondered which, if any of pinpoints of light, had planets hurtling around them and whether, on some of those planets, another being was also looking up in wonder at their own night sky. Then I thought about our own home planet, Earth, a tiny oasis of life and colour in a wilderness of space. It was a moving experience.

Words came to me and I jotted them down.

Here's what I could have written about the experience:

It's a dark, moonless, cloudless night.

I stare dumbfounded at the host of stars,

stretching out above me like a highway to heaven,

each star guiding its planets as a shepherd guides his sheep.

Maybe there's someone up there staring at his own night sky with similar thoughts to mine.

Space is so vast.

However did we get, did we deserve this Earth, our own planet. The sky is black and white but our planet, our oasis, is so colourful.

Instead I took time to create a sonnet of the experience.

On such a night as this I can but stare

into the heavens, struck dumb by what I see;

that infinite black with silvered filigree,

the million suns of heaven's thoroughfare.

Imagine this; around each shepherd star,

like sheep that dare not leave their guardian's lee,

whole worlds are clustered and each world might be

a home to others, living, like we are.

What hand of fate, what fortune gave me this,

this planet Earth, this mother to us all,

this world of sheer delight, this perfect home,

with sun that greets me daily with her kiss,

with mountain, river, valley, waterfall

and this, all this, in glorious polychrome?

I was pleased with the latter and would have been far less satisfied with the former. It's not skill that's needed - just patience, an ear for rhythm and a dictionary to help find suitable rhymes.

Which do you prefer?

Bring back formal verse!

The poems in this anthology were chosen for a number of reasons, including their relevance to World War I, to the audience and also the relevance to the anthology.

All of the poems selected were written in World War I, and have substantial subject matter related to that era. This is highly relevant to the target audience as many young people have relatives who have, or have not, returned from war. Another reason for selecting the poems I did was because I felt that the target audience, secondary school students, would be able to understand and interpret them easily.

The first poem, “The one Legged Man”, was written in 1916 by Siegfried Sassoon. Like most of Sassoon's' poems, this piece began as a journal entry about a man returning from war, thankful to be alive, despite missing a limb. Sassoon is an anti-war poet, and the vast majority of his poems speak of the horrors of war, and this poem is no exception, detailing everlasting effects on the men involved. “The one legged man” also contains poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration.

Similarly, “How to die” was also written by Siegfried Sassoon in 1918. This poem is almost parallel to Sassoon's other poem, “The one legged man”, in terms of the poetic techniques used and the message he was trying to deliver. Again, Sassoon has demonstrated his strong beliefs against war in this poem.

The third poem, “In the trenches”, was written in 1916 by Isaac Rosenberg. Isaac Rosenberg is considered to be one of the greatest British war poets of all time. After reading “In the trenches”, it's not difficult to see why. Rosenberg's use of personification, symbolism and rhyme really give this poem another dimension.

Unfortunately, “In the trenches” was on of Rosenberg's last poems as he was shot and killed in France on April 1st, 1918.

The fourth poem was again written by Siegfried Sassoon in 1918 and it titled “Base Details”. This is one of the few poems where Sassoon writes about his superior officers (they are also mentioned in “The General”), making this poem somewhat unique. This poem involves Sassoon telling the audience about the life of military leaders and how it contrasts to life on the battlefield. Strangely, Sassoon has not included any poetic devices other then rhyme in this poem.

The final poem is titled “Anthem for the doomed youth”, and was written in 1917 by Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen, coincidently, was very good friends with Siegfried Sassoon. This is due to a stint the men shared together at the Craiglockhart hospital in August, 1917. Owen was strongly influenced and encouraged by Sassoon to continue poetry. Sadly, the following year Owen passed away at the age of 25 from the wounds he received in an earlier fight. This poem was one of Owen's last and is about the absolute hopelessness that men in war face.

The One-Legged Man August 1916 Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967

Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald; A
Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; B
A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stalked field, A
And sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls. B

And he'd come home again to find it more A
Desirable than ever it was before. A
How right it seemed that he should reach the span B
Of comfortable years allowed to man! B

Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, A
Safe with his wound, a citizen of life. A
He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, B
And thought: "Thank God they had to amputate!" B

Analysis

What was surprising about this poem is that despite the poem being title “One-Legged man”, the reader doesn't actually learn this until the very last line. By doing this Sassoon has set the scene and created a visual imagery of the environment this man is returning to. Each line adds another facet to this visual image of this man's homecoming. The last paragraph sets the scene for his future life as a consequence of his life experiences. The image is finally completed with the final line identifying the man's injury.

This poem also manipulates many poetic devices including irony, alliteration and rhyme. The poem is very ironic in that despite losing his leg, the man still seams to be jovial and thankful. This is possibly due to the fact that he is still alive and managed to only lose one leg. The poem also has a rhyme scheme. This is represented by “A's” and “B's” on the poem.

The use of alliteration in “The one Legged Man” can be seen on lines 4 and 11. Sassoon has used alliteration effectively in this poem to create not only additionally detailed mental imagery, such as “Farmyard fowls”, but the use of alliteration in this poem also makes the image created more memorable. This is useful in this poem as the alliteration used, “Farmyard Fowls” and “Garden Gate”, both describe the peaceful environment this man is returning too.

How to die 1918 Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967

Dark clouds are smouldering into red A
while down the craters morning burns. B
The dying soldier shifts his head A
To watch the glory that returns; B
He lifts his fingers toward the skies A
Where holy brightness breaks in flame; B
Radiance reflected in his eyes, A
And on his lips a whispered name. B

You'd think, to hear some people talk, A
That lads go West with sobs and curses, B
And sullen faces white as chalk, A
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses. B
But they've been taught the way to do it A
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste B
And shuddering groans; but passing through it A
With due regard for decent taste. B

Analysis

The title of this poem is very powerful. It tells the reader that this is a very sad poem and that by going to war death is almost certain. Sassoon has done this to give the reader an idea of war, and, as the reader reads the poem their insight into the brutality and the sorrow of war increases.

The first paragraph of this poem tells of the slow death of a soldier as the sun rises. Sassoon has skilfully manipulated language and his choice of words in order to create a visual image that is slowly sculptured as the first four lines are read.

“Dark clouds are smouldering into red while down the craters morning burns the dying soldier shifts his head
  To watch the glory that returns”

The first half of the second paragraph speaks of the patriotism of soldiers for their countries and how they “want” to die for their land. This can be observed in the line “Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses”. The final half of the second paragraph tells of how the soldier faces his destiny with courage.

In the trenches 1916 Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918

I snatched two poppies A
from the parapet's ledge, B
two bright red poppies A
that winked on the ledge. B
Behind my ear -
I stuck one through, A
one blood red poppy -
I gave to you. A

The sandbags narrowed -
And screwed out our jest, B
And tore the poppy -
You had on your breast ... B
Down - a shell - O! Christ, -
I am choked ... safe ... dust blind, I A
See trench floor poppies -
Strewn. Smashed you lie. A

Analysis

This poem demonstrates the true sorrow of war. The poem depicts a battalion of men in the trenches. One of the men sees two poppies on the parapets ledge, picks them, and gives one to his friend. The symbolism of the poppy in this half of the poem is that of hope.

The second half of the poem tells of the horror of how the trenches were bombed, and how the sandbags exploded; hurling dust everywhere. When the dust clears, the man sees what he believes to be poppies all over the floor. However, he is very sadly mistaken, as this is actually human blood. He then sees his shattered friend.

Sassoon has also included poetic devices such as personification, symbolism and rhyme. The line “One blood red poppy” is not only personification, but also symbolism. After World War I, poppies were a sign of respect for those who had fallen in battle, for those who's blood has been spilt. Sassoon has also incorporated rhyme into this poem, resulting in the poem flowing smoothly.

Base Details

1918

Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, A

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, B

And speed glum heroes up the line to death. A

You'd see me with my puffy petulant face, B

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, A

Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap," B

I'd say-'I used to know his father well; A

Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.' B

And when the war is done and youth stone dead, A

I'd toddle safely home and die-in bed. A

Analysis

The theme of this poem is anger and bitterness towards military leaders. Sassoon is attacking men who start wars who carelessly send soldiers to death from the comfort of their armchairs. Sassoon almost makes it sound like the “Scarlet Majors” couldn't care less whether 5 men die, or 5000, as long as they win the battle.

Sassoon also stereotypes military leaders by saying they are “Fierce, and bald, and short of breath”, and that they have “Puffy petulant faces”. Sassoon finishes this poem by saying “I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed”. This is symbolizing that many soldier who die, don't die in the comfort of a bed, rather, they die on cold, hard soil. Sassoon has also used the word “toddle” to create the image of how the majors walk. It is used in such a way that the reader acquires the image of a person who is somewhat obese.

Anthem for the doomed youth 1917 Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? A --Only the monstrous anger of the guns. B Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle A
Can patter out their hasty orisons. B
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, A
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-- B
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; A
And bugles calling for them from sad shires. B

What candles may be held to speed them all? A
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes B
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. B
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; A
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, B
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds B

Analysis

This poem is called “Anthem for the doomed youth”. It describes the irony of the death of young soldiers being heralded by the sounds of gunfire, rapid rifles and shells wailing, and the sound of the bugle calling instead of the mourning by prayer and church bells. The second paragraph details the way that the dying soldier wait for death with the glimmering hope in their eyes, but this fades as they slip away, like a blind slowly drawing down , blocking out the light.

This poem contains vast amounts of poetic devices, including alliteration, rhyme and personification. Alliteration can be observed on lines 3, 8, 11 and 16. Personification is used in this poem to describe the sounds the guns and shells make. An example of this can be seen on lines two and three, where guns have “Monstrous anger”, and have a “stutter”. The word “Stuttering” is also used effectively as onomatopoeia, allowing the reader to understand the rifle further. Shells are described as sounding like a “Wailing, Demented choir”. This is effective because of the mental imagery created by the word “choir”. This allows the reader to create their own picture of the “Wailing, Demented choir”. The rhyme scheme can be observed by the “A's” and “B's” adjacent to the poem.

- By William Butler Yeates

When considering great works of poetry, many people picture complicated prose, epic poems and the good old Shakespearean experience.  However, often times, it is the simplest phrase that can bring about the most emotional responses.

My family came to America in October 1991 from Belarus (Former Soviet Republic).  The important element to grasp is that even though minorities cry descrimination and religious groups cry persecution and Americans curse the immigrants, all of these people had more than we did.  My parents had no money, no jobs, and no language.  Despite having little money and little English, my family fought against the hard times and managed to earn their place in American Society. 

Despite their success, my parents always say that my sister and I are their reason for coming to this country, their reason for fighting against the current, and that we were and are their life.  My parent's could not afford to give us riches.  If they had "the heavens' embroidered cloths", they would have draped it on our shoulders and under our feet.  But all my parents truly had was their dreams.  Dreams that my sister and I will go further in life than they did, that we will be instilled with values and morals that my parents infused within us, and that we would always be close to our family.  Those are the dreams on which i tread and i tread ever so softly. 

But as I said, I've got a long way to go before I can call myself an expert. Reading an incredibly well-read critic like Edmund Wilson-who truly was an expert-makes this painfully clear. And of all the fields of literature in which I am not an expert, I am probably least expert in poetry. Having said that, I think the subject is fair game for anyone with a passion for the medium-and I do believe I have that.

It wasn't until high school that I sat down and read Poetry with a capital "P" in a systematic way. I'm not sure why that is. I think I internalized early on a lot of prejudices about poetry. Probably these came to me from school, which spent a lot of time assuring me that poetry is not something which can be understood on the first reading, or even the second or third. And if the poem can be understood, there must be something wrong with it. This is a fairly standard myth and it used to make me wonder how anyone could sit through a poetry reading if the words were not meant to be grasped. So I felt early on that I "didn't like poetry," which is ridiculous, because in my limited encounters with it, it always carried me away. It's bizarre how many people continue to love the poems they occasionally read, yet feel instinctively that they don't like poetry. This probably has to do with the snobbery that's built up around it-the idea that the more obscure and esoteric the verse, the better it is. The sniffing of academics and pedants is enough to turn anyone off. But what's odd is that poetry was once considered to be the "common man's art."

But as I was saying, the poems I did encounter picked me up and shook me in a way I have never felt with other forms of writing. It's true! No matter how much a novel or an essay may move me, the sort of breathless gut impact that you get from poetry can't be found in any other medium. My taste was (and is) fairly philistine. The truth is that it's possible to remain a philistine even after you've read a great deal. In those days, I tended to go for things for the obvious and well-known poems-things like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or "The Raven." It was phrases like "For the good lord loves all," or "My soul shall be lifted-nevermore!" that got me. In other words, those neat little ribbons tied to the ends of poems which give you the message of the narrative. These pleasures are fairly obvious and easy to obtain-the pleasures of the little end-rhyme that seems like it was meant to be there before the poet ever set pen to paper-but when I was a kid, they felt like punches in the gut, and very pleasing ones too. Whenever I read poetry I look for that feeling again, that rush you get from reading something simple, stupid, and beautiful. It's hard to find it now that I'm older, so frequently, the poems I enjoy the most are those which I dimly recall encountering as a kid. When I do find that occasional neat little verse, the pleasure still carries me away. My palms start to sweat at the right combination of sounds.

But the meaning of the verse too is definitely important. There's a myth about poetry that it is only valuable for the sounds it makes. This leads us to believe that even if we can't understand a word of a poem, that doesn't matter-we should delight in the sheer word-craft of it. But I'm not aware of any poem which has profoundly affected me which was incomprehensible. Even, say, T.S. Eliot's "Preludes," which is both "difficult" and affecting, succeeds because it really isn't difficult at all-the feelings conveyed in the poem are entirely comprehensible. They matter as much as the sound of the words themselves. Meaning and words have to work together. Which isn't to say that poems have to have the "right meaning." For instance, when I was a kid, I understood that poems like "Gunga Din" and "The White Man's Burden" were racist and offensive in the extreme, but they still affected me as poems. It didn't matter whether the meaning was an agreeable one or not-it just had to be comprehensible on some level.

I'm sure I sound like I'm making a list of the worst sort of hallmark-card poetry in English and passing it off as the best there is. But I'm being honest-these were the poems which affected me as a kid, and, to some extent, when I look for that poetic rush, I still look in similar places. I've outgrown "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," but I look for the same sort of thrill you get from the first two lines of that poem. The thrill of recognition. The thrill of seeing words lined up together in a way so perfect it seems preordained.

I rediscovered poetry in high school, as I said. Not, may I remind you, in any class. English classes have a unique power to drain all life and interest out of any book or poem. But it was as a teenager in high school that I found poetry once more. And the man who did this for me was Robert Burns. From him, I moved on to other poets. As a senior in high school, I read a lot of Hazlitt. His essays led me to the Romantics in general and to Romantic poetry in particular. All this time, I was reading a lot that wasn't poetry, and poetry has never been my central focus. But I have read and enjoyed enough of it to form one or two ideas on the subject.

Poetry, to me, is the most genuinely moving form of writing, and there are many days when I feel defeated in my search for a good novel to read and have to sit down with some familiar poems. Familiar poems! Those are by far the best. The poems I've read over and over again. I'm always looking for that thrill which I've tried to describe already, and, in that search, I tend to go over the poems in which I remember first feeling it. Sometimes I reread poems which I remember affecting me quite strongly, only to discover that the magical feeling-whatever it was-is lost. Sometimes I feel a faint tremor of the thrill but it fails to materialize. That's when I tend to sit down and write my own poem in order to capture it. I'm a very, very bad poet, but this effort to capture an essence, for me at least, is usually successful.

There's a huge amount of poetry out there which doesn't get me going. This I must admit. I've spent most of my time reading English poetry, but between Caedmon and Wordsworth there are a lot of weak hands. There's this incredibly wonderful era of early anonymous ballads ("The Twa Corbies," "Sir Patrick Spens," "Barbara Allen," "The Three Ravens," etc.) which strike a brilliant balance of cynical wit, musicality, and narrative force. But then, it would seem, the Brits forgot whatever magical properties these early poems had and took a turn for the worse.

The truth is that these early ballads were meant to be sung by ordinary people and passed along. They had to say something about life as people actually lead it. They had to be worth remembering. But as poetry became the property of courtiers and landed aristocrats-people who are totally out of step with real life, real concerns, and any sort of sympathy with the mass of humanity-it lost a lot of emotional power. And so you get court toadies like Edmund Spenser monopolizing poetry. To be sure, there were great poets in the Elizabethan era (and I realized I've jumped a bit from the era of the ballads). I don't even have to mention Shakespeare. Sir Walter Raleigh was a good poet even if there's a bit of pastoral silliness in his poems. The pastoral fetish of the Elizabethans can be found in Marlowe's short poems and Sir Philip Sidney's work as well. It was a way for courtiers and monarchs stuffed full of game hen to pretend that life outside of the palace was also full of fun and games. These poems tend to have references to "little shepherds," a so forth: a patronizing sentimentalism which hasn't aged well. Then there are word-smiths like Lyly who simply bore me.

But I've gotten away from myself-I was listing good Elizabethan poets. Ben Jonson-what little I've read of his short poems I've enjoyed. There was also Thomas Campion. As a song-writer, he falls outside of the mainstream Elizabethan circle and he's all the better for it. "I Care Not for These Ladies," "What Fair Pomp,"-his poems are misogynistic, there's no denying it, but as I've said, the meaning doesn't have to be a good one to make a good poem. Campion is probably one of the saving graces of his era.

And it goes on. John Donne? I've never really been that impressed with him, but maybe it's just that I haven't really read him, or haven't read the right poems. And then, of course, there are those associated with him-the metaphysical poets. My indifference to Donne tends to extend to these as well. George Herbert leaves me unimpressed. Thomas Carew and Andrew Marvell interest me enough-particularly Marvell who wrote one truly wonderful poem, "An Horation on the Return of Cromwell from Ireland." But his most famous poem, "To His Coy Mistress," strikes me as unsympathetic and even unpleasant. It's symptomatic of the general indifference and selfishness of English poets prior to the Romantics. The poets I really enjoy from the 1600s would be the Cavalier poets. The Cavaliers tended to be Romantics before the term came about. They had a cause and they believed in it, and even if the cause (the maintenance of the monarchy) was a lousy one, it led to some great poetry (e.g. Richard Lovelace's "To Althea," and "Going to the Wars"). Robert Herrick? Another sometime Cavalier although not a political one like Lovelace. I enjoy his work but it gives off the impression of irrelevance. Not that it's unimportant poetry, it's just so far removed from real life that it ceases to matter. For instance, Herrick addressed some of his best love poems to a woman (Julia) whom he appears to have invented.

Nestled in amongst the rest on the roll of English poets is a strange and overlooked poet who doesn't fit into any movement. Still, he's one of the best they've got-John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. The man was a libertine and a 17th-century scoundrel, as well as a great poet. His strength lies in the fact that everything he wrote was filled with venom and sardonic wit. Maybe he couldn't support a nation's poetry on his shoulders, but he is definitely a refreshing and iconoclastic writer who wrote some of my favorite poems. In a national poetry in which everything is unerringly lofty, Rochester's bawdy and cynical lines come as a breath of fresh air. My favorites are, "A Satyre against Mankind," and "Upon Nothing."

I have to say that I haven't read what is probably the best verse of the Augustans (in other words, Swift, Pope, John Gay, and others). I've read a few short poems by Swift which I enjoyed, but the great works of Pope, including "The Dunciad," "An Essay on Man," and so forth, I haven't attempted.

Further on in the 18th-century, we come to the Churchyard poets and, more broadly, the pre-Romantics. Here things start to look up. I've mentioned some older poets I enjoy but they are few and far between. But with Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, William Cowper, Thomas Chatterton, George Crabbe, and others, we get into some interesting stuff. True, Gray is fairly affected in his emotions-the "Distant Prospect of Eton College" doesn't exactly make me choke up every time I read it. But Collin's odes and Cowper's short poems are genuine, personally significant, and moving.

But still, whatever we can get out of those old anonymous ballads was missing from English poetry. Some zest for life had faded from it. The basic problem with English poetry-that is steered clear of narrative, that it lacked musicality, that it was irrelevant and unconcerned with the real meat of human life-was still unsolved. It only began to be solved with two poets-William Blake and Robert Burns. These two should have changed the world, but they didn't. Still, it was a start. Blake blew me away when I first read him. The poem, "The Chimney Sweeper" gave me that mysterious rush and more: when I finally came to it in an anthology of English poetry, it seemed to me that Blake had breathed life into a national poetry that was flaccid and bombastic. That bit about the boy wandering the city "crying ‘weep, ‘weep, ‘weep"-you never encountered that kind of thing in Andrew Marvell. Here was poetry that had to do with real life. Here was poetry which meant something. I felt the elusive rush.

But it was Burns, as I said, who reintroduced my high school self to poetry. It was, of course, "To a Mouse," which drew me in. But it was "Man was Made to Mourn," "A Man's a Man for a' That," and "A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation," which got me hooked. Especially "Man was Made to Mourn"-that absolutely bowled me over. I don't think I've ever felt the same way about a poem since. Of course, it wouldn't mean much to most people who read it-it probably isn't even a very good poem. But at the time in my life when I read it, it was the perfect poem for me. It was almost as if it had been written purely for my sake. That's a rare feeling. It is much more than the "mysterious rush."

Burns was deemed a "peasant poet." But what that really meant was that he was trained in the tradition of the anonymous balladeers, and all their virtues were in him. Burns understood human life in its raw intensity. What an incredible relief after a load of court poets drooling over monarchs. Burns wrote with the voice of the people.

Burns, I think, would have saved poetry single-handedly if people had paid more attention. But because of his use of dialect and his traditional balladic turn of phrase, he was dismissed as a cute side act from Scotland and nothing more. It took Wordsworth and Coleridge to get the job done.

And it is with those two that everyone recognizes the revolution in poetry-mostly because they articulated and formulated what they were trying to do. Along with Southey, the other Lake Poet, Wordsworth and Coleridge systematically ignored all pre-existing English poetry. They did away with elegance and bombast and replaced it with some of the best and most moving verses there are. The rush occurs again and again when I read the pair, particularly their Lyrical Ballads, which they published together during their early radical phase. The ballads went back right to the source I've been talking about-the anonymous ballads. They attempted to escape from Ivory Tower-ism and say something genuine about the lives of real people.

But Coleridge and Wordsworth's post-Lyrical Ballads work is less interesting to me. They had to give way to the next generation of Romantics-Shelley, Byron, Keats, and their circle. Leigh Hunt, the essayist, was also a very good poet from this era. As was Walter Savage Landor, but he just can't be grouped with the others. No, Shelley, Byron, and Keats definitely get the most attention. But my own opinion is that Shelley is by far the best of the bunch, although he seems to get less attention than the others. Maybe it's just that Byron suffers in anthologies. I haven't read "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," "Don Juan," or the other famous long Byron poems. But his shorter works don't stand out for me. Keats, meanwhile, was definitely a great poet, but his work doesn't seem substantial in quite the same way Shelley's does.

If you were to ask me the name of my all-time favorite poet, it would hands-down be Shelley. He too suffers in anthologies, but in his case, I've read his longer works, and it is in them that his talents shine through. Unfortunately, most students know him for a very boring poem called, "Ode to the West Wind." But I would recommend the lengthy (but unfinished) "Triumph of Life," as his best work. His "Masque of Anarchy," is without doubt the best political poem ever written, with a true revolutionary intensity, and I would also recommend "The Revolt of Islam" and "Queen Mab." To enjoy Shelley you have to get lost in the flow of words. This can only happen in the longer pieces.

It would be nice if we could shut the book at this point. The hero (the Romantic revolution) has saved the damsel in distress (English poetry) and they should have all lived happily ever after. But we still have to deal with the mass of poetry which has been published since then, as well as with American poetry. Should we deal with German, French, and Spanish poetry too? No, for two simple reasons. First of all, I don't know that much about it, and second, most national poetry is self-contained. English poets haven't been too influenced by, say, Mallarmé or Rimbaud. The reason, of course, is that poetry doesn't translate. So if we want to talk about what has shaped English poetry, we can stay in the English-speaking world.

So, in England, what happened next? We had John Clare-another one of my favorites. He was very much in the Burns tradition of the peasant poet. I haven't read a tremendous amount of Clare, but his best poems, I would say, are those he wrote after he felt he had been abandoned and betrayed by the poetic establishment. Robert Browning, originally a worshipper of Shelley, grew up to become a very different and interesting thing. Out of step with "Victorian Poetry," Browning wrote some of the weirdest and most fascinating stuff out there. "Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is one of the best poems I've read. It bears definite traces of Shelley's influence, particularly "The Triumph of Life," although it's stranger and more abstruse than anything Shelley wrote. But in this poem, I think I can honestly say that the meaning is unimportant-what matters is the feeling of stepping into a nightmare, which is very real.

Tennyson wrote some interesting stuff, along with a few banal pieces like, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Of Old Sat Freedom." It's hard to believe that the same person who wrote these also wrote "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," and "The Lady of Shalott." The problem was the conflict between Tennyson's very real and interesting gifts and his role as Poet Laureate, which involved writing a lot of dumb little verses commemorating every pointless royal occasion.

There are plenty of other Victorian poets whom I could name: Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, or perhaps the Pre-Raphaelites: the Rossettis, Swinburne, etc. But the truth is that I don't know these poets well enough. They all wrote some excellent poems, but nothing which comes back to play itself over and over again in my mind. Some of the later Victorians do achieve this. Hardy was definitely a great poet. Housman had a few good verses here and there, but most of the pleasure lies in the fact that you can say, "Oh, I see what he means by that." Although one of his poems, "Hell Gate," definitely stands out above the sentimental "Athlete Dying Young" sort of Housman poem.

I also happen to like the great Victorian
nonsense poets, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Maybe that upsets my neat theory about the meaning of a poem being important, but I would say that the appeal of "The Jabberwocky," lies in the fact that the supposedly nonsensical words actually seem to mean something to us. They aren't words we recognize, but they call up something from childhood which makes sense in the context of insanity. Same goes for Lear and his "runcible spoon."

There are two other Victorians I've encountered recently who are very interesting but whom I haven't managed to read all that extensively. They are William Ernest Henley and John Davidson-a Scottish balladeer in the best possible tradition.

And after the Victorians? People tend to believe that the modernist revolt was born out of a reaction against these poets, but really, it came in the midst of a whole stream of gooey Edwardian and Georgian poetry. By "gooey" I mean that it was, on the whole, motivated by a lot of good-fellow boosterism, a lot of hearty patriotism and Old Etonian values. Not that it was always bad poetry. As I've said, I still can't resist the verse of Kipling, even though his ideas are totally against my own. If you seek that feeling of "neatness," of rhymes which fit nicely together and seem to tie everything up like ribbons, then Kipling is the place to go. "Danny Deever," "Gentlemen Rankers," even that horrible "stiff-upper lip" bit in "If-": my intellect rebels against it but I can't resist the thrill of the rhymes.

Another gooey post-Victorian would be Rupert Brooke, although he doesn't have the narrative or musical gifts of Kipling. He wrote a lot of fairly lousy poems during the lead up to the First World War comparing stout patriots to "hearts unmoved by honor." After the likes of him, Wilfred Owen comes as a real breath of fresh air: and here we come to another of my all-time favorites (I know that I probably throw the word around so much it's lost all meaning, but Owen is definitely worthy of it). "Dulce et Decorum Est" is probably what could be called an "obvious poem," but I think I've tried to make it clear that obviousness doesn't deprive a poem of all value-in fact, it can increase it. Poems, I believe, were meant to be read aloud, to be sung even, and the meanings should not be so obscure that you need an encyclopedia and a biography of the poet close at hand to make any sense of them. But despite, or perhaps because of its obviousness, "Dulce et Decorum Est," took the wind out of me in a truly startling way when I first read it. The Owen poems I've encountered since have had the same effect, every single one of them. That's a very rare treat-with most poets at least a portion of their work leaves me yawning. True, I haven't read all of Owen (and, unfortunately, he didn't live to produce a great deal, thanks to the war), but everything of his I've encountered has bowled me over. Owen's mission, of course, wasn't an aesthetic one, but simply to reveal "the pity of war," as he put it. The pity of it! That's just it! If poetry is meant to inspire certain emotions then Owen was dead-on, and I don't think he gives enough credit to his own aesthetic gifts. Isaac Rosenberg is another excellent war poet, and what little of him I've read I've enjoyed.

Before I move on to the modernists, I have to look at American poetry in general, since a lot of modernism was imported by American ex-pats.

Of course, I am an American, and as such, I have to give credit where credit is due. American poetry was more or less born out of that band of feel-gooders, those warm old Unitarians, the "Fireside Poets." That is: Longfellow, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and so forth. And even though his themes, his intellectual milieu, and everything else about him are so different, I would list Poe along with the others for the simple reason that he occupies the same position as mental furniture in my mind. All of these American poets wrote verses which seem to have been a part of our lives since before we could even read. That's why the "Fireside" label is so accurate-these poets give off that warm glow, that faint sense of American nostalgia and familiarity. I wouldn't list any of them among my favorite poets, but you really have to be cold not to get a secret pleasure out of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." But what's more, these poets also wrote some truly excellent poems which don't give off any hallmark-card nostalgia and are powerful in their own right. For instance, Whittier's "Ichabod," and "What the Birds Said." True, he was responsible for the reprehensible "In School Days," but even that has a certain wet, soppy charm. And Longfellow was truly an excellent poet in my opinion, a man, like Tennyson, capable of coming up with obvious, catchy poems which would be memorized in countless class-rooms, as well as more troubling, personal, and searching poems. And Poe? Well, he's jolly good fun. That's all you can really say for him.

Who are my other favorite American poets? A lot of the truly iconic ones have so far failed to gain my attention. Whitman, for example. Maybe I just haven't encountered him properly yet, but his long, half-prose lines with their non-rhymes never really gave me the thrill I'm after. Dickinson has certainly impressed me; she could be one of the better American poets out there. Particularly her short and troubling poems, such as "I never heard the word ‘escape'" or "A toad can die of light." But I haven't explored her work extensively enough to really list her as a personal favorite. If I we were to get to my personal favorites, they would have to be Edgar Lee Masters, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg.

I haven't read the complete "Spoon River Anthology," but I've read enough of it to know that Masters is one of the best there is. Something about his verse sketches strike a chord deep in my American core-there's a weird nostalgia and recognition associated with Masters which I don't get from any sentimental poems about childhood or the past. Masters writes about the real America and there is nothing idealized or false about his portrait.

Edward Arlington Robinson seems almost to fit in with the same tradition. He's one of those poets I remember enjoying but who doesn't leave me with any individual verses which echo through my mind over and over again. Still, his sad portraits of lonely, constrained people, as in "Miniver Cheevy," and "Mr. Flood's Party," definitely affect me.

Dunbar is one of the best and most versatile poets I've encountered. He's the sort of writer who can move between different styles, dialects, voices, and tones, and still come out with great poems. What's more, his poems are all great in different ways! His dialect poems and his (what's the word?) "straightforward" poems, are wonderful, but they also seem to have come from different people.

I'm also fond of Stephen Crane, but only because I don't quite know what to make of his short little narrative poems, sometimes of only four or five lines. He doesn't give me "the thrill," but he does leave me with a strange confusion, which is by no means a bad thing.

Vachel Lindsay is a poet I've only recently discovered, but what I've encountered so far is very interesting. His use of sound, sheer noise, in his poems is unlike anything I've read, but he also wrote some fairly straightforward verse, like "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," which is powerful stuff. Sandburg, meanwhile, is more obvious. There's rarely any doubt as to what he is trying to say-he reminds me of Owen in that sense-but as someone currently living in Chicago, I can say that no one understood the city better. My favorite Sandburg poems are his more overtly political pieces, such as "They Will Say," and "I am the People, the Mob." And I don't just enjoy the pieces because I share Sandburg's democratic socialist views-as I've pointed out, I enjoy a lot of poems which express views I find distasteful. But Sandburg, like Owen, gets to the heart of things, "the pity" of them, if you will.

Now I suppose I have to deal with the modernists, and I have to say, I think they have done poetry more harm than good. Not that they shouldn't have existed; probably the strictness of meter and rhyme ought to be broken up occasionally. I'm all for doing away with arbitrary rules in writing. But it was the modernists who infected poetry with this notion that it ought to be obscure and esoteric. Many of the modernists leave me unimpressed. Pound, for instance, doesn't interest me much. H.D. is too deliberately snooty and classical. Williams? He was an interesting poet, even an excellent one. But not a personal favorite of mine. I have to give credit to Eliot for being a truly great poet-probably the best of the modernists-but only because his poems make sense. He may be "difficult," but he is by no means unapproachable, as I find Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, and others to be. E.E. Cummings and Marianne Moore were both quite good. I haven't read much Moore, but "Poetry" and "Silence" both impressed me profoundly. But again, both Cummings and Moore are decidedly understandable and approachable-they just choose to convey their message in experimental ways.

As we get into more recent poetry, my sympathies definitely tend toward the other side of the Atlantic. I haven't read extensively in the Auden circle-for instance, I haven't read any Spender or Day-Lewis-but Auden himself was a truly great poet. There's the well-known "Musee des Beaux Arts," but I also enjoy "Epitaph on a Tyrant," "Old People's Home," "The Unknown Citizen," and others. Auden, to me, represents a return to the virtues of the Romantic Revolution-and here, I'm giving a different interpretation of that revolution than is generally offered, but we'll come back to that. Other modern Brits I've enjoyed are Geroge Barker and Edwin Muir.

I do enjoy some 20th-century American poets. For instance, Richard Wright, not generally thought of as a poet, wrote one of my all-time favorites, "Between the World and Me." I'm also partial to Langston Hughes. But my most modern "personal favorite" poet is a very English one-Philip Larkin. A part of "The Movement" which opposed the neo-Romanticism of Dylan Thomas, Larkin has written some truly eerie, violent, and beautiful poems. They are fuelled by a lot of misogyny at times, but as a unique and powerful poet, you can't beat Philip Larkin. "This be the Verse," "A Study of Reading Habits," "Aubade," "High Windows": I could go on. Maybe it seems strange that a lover of the Romantics would prefer Larkin to a neo-Romantic like Dylan Thomas. But I do, and the reason, I believe, is that Thomas got the Romantics all wrong. He and the rest of the world saw the Romantics as a generation of long-haired, sensitive types. But remember, Lyrical Ballads, the book which really launched the revolution in poetry, was not meant to be a showcase of sentimentality-its purpose was to rediscover the traditional folk-ballad. In other words, to bring the so-called "common people" back into poetry. It was a very democratic and revolutionary movement.

So what is my guiding principle in reading poetry? I look for "the thrill," as I've explained, but I've also read enough poetry by now to know where I can find it. Sometimes I find it (and this is the guilty pleasure) in "neatness"-in nice, familiar, and predictable verses. But I also find it in verses which get back to the heart of the traditional ballad-which combine musicality, narrative, and a sense of what life is all about. Whenever poetry is furthest from the Ivory Tower, that's when it is at its best. So, to return to the title of the essay, I'll offer up a list of my favorite poets. First of all would be the Romantics and their immediate forbears: particularly Shelley, Blake, and Robert Burns (does he count?). Other favorites would include Browning, Auden, Wilfred Owen, and Philip Larkin from England (although Auden was almost a full-fledged American), and Dunbar, Sandburg, and Masters from the United States.

What do we expect of a great poet: an obsession with death and time allied to a profound love of life in all its concrete detail, a gift for the understanding of character and especially the internal character of the writer himself, an ability to make that detail and those characters echo in the reader's mind. Above all, an acute awareness of the fallibility of the poetic project, of the inability of poetry to speak its desires. All of this combined with a delicate touch for the way that words can sing. It is clear from the evidence of this volume that Jenner possesses all of these.

To begin with something as simple (or complex) as an amaryllis:

And the amaryllis knows its purposes,
as its genes' thumbprint whorls
notches, trembling in small
ratchets as it crooks its
point-making way up;
nicks and tucks at light
climbs in day-limber stages
towards the sun - furled
till the sudden slow horn
breathes a silent call of pollen.

This is a marvellous integration into words of both the image of growth and what impels it, bracketed by the double half-rhyme of "whorls notche"s and "call of pollen" with "small" and "horn" tucked just inside them. The poet too has that thumbprint at the end of his fingers which tap

like a plant
at words sturturous as my
pollen-caught asthma

Both flower and poet manage to grow almost without their crucial air, the plant's genes producing the pollen which the poet's genes almost stop him breathing. The flower "mocks my fingers" two decades' circular rosary' - the "thumbprint whorls" that are the cause of both (notice how apposite is rose-ary here).

furled
till the sudden slow horn
breaths a silent call of pollen
And then the final movement which grants - just - both life and the poem:
Or me, as what climbs drumming out of it
without a breathing pattern to cross
ancient pollen-counts and made the air.

This is also, of course, a poem about writing. The flower grows just as the poem grows - in parallel. Keats writes: "if poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all" and Middleton Murry notes that the natural, although it may seem easy, involves effort, an effort that can fail. Both flower and poem are natural yet horribly difficult as is the catch of the poet's breath that echoes in the words that catch it. Thus what is so very natural is also almost impossibly difficult "Litter of rhetoric, cell-spent exhaustions / geared to so wastefully.

The poem hinges on the poet"s autobiography which forms the backbone of the book. There are pieces on his father who went from aircraft designer to eye surgeon and professor via a leg amputation which left him with "a limp long incinerated / and a depth charged map of pain". Thus can the poet refer to himself as "the crippled child of a healing man". There are also dedications and some wonderful love poems. Here, for example is "Two"s Flesh, a three-liner:

Our film lay rolled for months -
love lit tight on black. Now, prints,
so late our love's faltered, unravelled in the light

Thus "Desire does the perfect damage". Section II is on music and includes the longer piece "Xenakis" which has already been called a classic. Jenner has long been a music critic and knows this world intimately.

This being English poetry, verbal games and punning are to be expected. This involves a playful seriousness - not an oxymoron. The word is often unexpected in its absolute rightness and certainty. Ravished by the exactness of its placing. This is like playing a game - with the words and with the reader. But games are serious things and you break the rules at your peril. The secret is to get just this side of breaking them, to make the ref. rise the whistle to his lips and hesitate before deciding against and then, to everyone's consternation, even so to score the goal. Here area couple of stanzas on a cold snap in the middle of winter:

All life flees to sub-zero's drained
chromatic poles of black, white
narrowed to snowball fighting laughter
or habit-hunkered death in doorways
scribbled along iron margins of the city.
The line's down. I buffet streaming
scarf and shivers to your flat, light yards off,
blinded by the swirl's swart eternity

notice here particularly "drained", "scribbled" and "light yards" and how such words tighten the text into its own kind of intensity.

This is not only close enough to the breaking of rules but of logic. There is a consummate taking of risks - essential to poetic creativity. In order to compose fragments of experience Jenner fragments experience but only because each fragment points, while still remaining a fragment, to the whole. The architecture here has the confidence of delicacy: "The severed finger relates back to the hand". In this there is the consummate taking of risks essential to poetry.

Of course, this is "difficult" or "modern" poetry and will probably not be reviewed as it is out of fashion. I believe, however, that the world will catch up with it. This little review is to let you have advance warning so that later on you will be able to say "I told you so".

"Nothing is taken from us.

Ours is the land.

Ours the sea and the sky.

Ours the magic and the vision."

While relating the struggles and hardships of slavery, Morejon manages to relate the spirit of the Caribbean woman who holds tightly to her roots. The poem of struggle is interspersed with one-line stanzas of power, "I rebelled", "I rose up", and "I worked harder".

Morejon was born in Havana and writes essays and poetry, mostly about women and about being black and about being Cuban. She insists that the key to understanding the Caribbean is "a cultural concept, not a geographical one." In an interview with CubaNow in 2004, Morejon says, "I have taken part…not only as a literary creator but also as a cultural promoter, especially among Blacks, Indians and Latinos." Towards this end, Morejon’s poetry promotes not just the power of a black woman, but the power of an entire culture.

A large part of her work exposes the bourgeoisie society and elevates the working class to a place of martyrdom. Her work is a history of an oppressed and enslaved culture. "I cannot imagine a human being outside of his/her environment," she told Cubanow. The implications of that statement are varied, depending on how one looks at it. Morejon means that her work rests in her environment, which is the Caribbean, Cuba, and more specifically, the oppression of the black woman in the Caribbean. But the statement also points to the horror of the human being sold at auction, taken out of their environment and forced to live in another alien environment.

So many people have moved from one environment to another, forcibly and of their own volition. Some adapt and some do not. The white settlers of the Caribbean could not adapt to the changes in their environment, while much of the slave population did – they had learned through many generations the art of adaptation. Morejon represents culture adaptation in her poetry – "I have forgotten neither my lost coast, nor my ancestral tongue./here I was born again." And "Here I built my world."

The Caribbean became for Morejon’s ancestors a New World. It also became a New World for the white settlers fleeing Spain, England, and eventually, the United States. While the slaves were brought by force to the Caribbean, most of the white settlers chose to emigrate. Nonetheless, the Caribbean became a way of life, a culture for both peoples. The Loyalist population all but disappeared from the islands, while the slave culture stayed on and thrived. Why couldn’t the white settlers adapt to their new environment? What role do the white settlers of the Caribbean have in Caribbean culture and history?