Which Poem(s) or Poet(s) Awakened Your Passion for the Craft?

I can't say when poetry became a part of me, as I feel it always was. The poet that electrified me, if I were to only pick one, would be Pablo Neruda. Particularly his love poems, particularly the poem YOUR LAUGHTER. He has made me a romantic, though a lot of his love poems are about bitterness and love lost...I see the hope and the enchantment with love in his words. It's almost magical, how we can love. To see it warn out, or lost, or gone, or converted to hatred...that is so poetic...as darkly as mysterious as the love itself. His poetry made (and makes) me want to say the things that are in my heart...the things I don't want to share until I think in terms of words and the building of a handful of perfect words to describe existence and my place in it. Poetry is a progression of aspiring. I'm not finished aspiring yet.

A portion of Your Laughter:

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

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I am troubled
Immeasurably
By your eyes

I amStruck
By the feather
of your soft
Reply

The sound of glass
Speaks quick
Disdain

And conceals
What your eyes fight
To explain

Jim Morrison

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I'm sure there may be something before this, but it is what I think of when I imagine the switch being flipped in me.

My stepmom had a binder in the attic full of her own poetry and in, I'd guess about, 7th grade I stumbled upon it.

I don't remember if any of them were any good, but I remember it made me feel like not such a freak to always be writing things down.

But for my own development of my own style, Morrison hit me at just the right time. A combination of the music I listened to, and reading things like On The Road, and everything I could get my hands on by Vonnegut and Tom Robbins probably shaped me more than I realized until later. But I still have Wilderness on my bookshelf. I don't read it very often, and really a lot of the work isn't my thing. But at the time, I needed it, and that one poem in particular blew me away. It has stayed with me.

I expanded my reading quite a bit after that, read a lot of classics, even studied some poetry in college, found myself drawn to Shakespeare, but for all of it, Morrison got me in the gut first.

I hope mine isn't as odd as I think it is.

T.S. Eliot

In my sophomore year of high school, I was in a college-prep English class. One semester was all poetry/verse. So the term paper had to be about a poet. I wanted something different. No one was talking about T.S. Eliot.

The teacher gave me a funny look when I told her I picked him.

That was the most trying term paper I've ever written. I got a C for being two weeks late, but the teacher said the paper could have been part of a thesis, that I had a future as an English scholar. Wow.

To this day, I don't know what I said. I wrote the damn thing the night before, frustrated that I couldn't find a theme. I simply copied a ton of notes into a "he said, she said, they said" mishmash and turned it in. I told my mom the night before, with burning eyes, that I was going to fail.

But even though I found it nearly impossible to keep up with it all, the way that Eliot played with symbols and symbolism in The Waste Land captivated me. I don't think I've ever been so mesmerized by something I never really understood.

I'll never have the depth of reading that T.S. Eliot had. But every once in a while, I take another shot at it.

This sums it up nicely for me:

“I don't know what it means and I don't care because it's Shakespeare and it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

William Haskins said:

it would stand to reason that, for most of us, a switch was flipped at some point.

what did it? when (or at what age)? why do you think it affected you at the time?

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Walt Whitman did it for me. When I was 11 a dear friend gave me a copy of Leaves of Grass and encouraged me to write poetry.


Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.


I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

The beginnings of these poems flipped my switch. I loved traveling and this struck a chord in me. Whitman affects me on an intellectual, emotional, and visceral level more than any other writer. Reading him is like listening to my own soul speak to me.

William Haskins said:

how do you view that transformation from where you are currently in

your life? does it still seem poignant? naive in retrospect? how did

it pave the way for the poet you've become?

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It's still poignant to me because my friend died a year later. I think of her every time I write. I was a science student in college but took a creative writing class just for kicks. After that, my writing improved tremendously.

I go in and out of periods when I write poetry. It's usually because a poet flips that switch in me again. Ones that have include Gary Snyder, Basho, Wang Wei, Rumi, and Pablo Neruda.

oh PandaMan, I went through a huge stage for Whitman. I adore him.

The librettos of W. S. Gilbert, especially Pirates of Penzance. For the most part, I can't stand listening to opera but if they are done casually enough they are quite enjoyable.

William Haskins said:

it would stand to reason that, for most of us, a switch was flipped at some point.

what did it? when (or at what age)? why do you think it affected you at the time?

how do you view that transformation from where you are currently in your life? does it still seem poignant? naive in retrospect? how did it pave the way for the poet you've become?

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i know when the switch flipped, and what flipped it, but I am no poet sir.

Dylan Thomas, I think, with his poems " And Death shall have no dominion" and "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower".

I've gone through my poetic history a couple of times here, so won't repeat it all. I was a hater of poetry for decades. I could blame that on a series of English teachers who insisted I see "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" as a suicide poem when I didn't see that. But no matter why. I lost about 30 years of possible poetic development for whatever reason.

I wish I could pinpoint an exact poem and poet and time when I realized poetry wasn't a bad thing, but rather a beautiful thing, but I can't. Sometime around 1998 I began reading Frost, along with some others. Frost was probably the biggest influence. I also tried reading Paradise Lost with only minimal success.

The closest to a light flipping on was when I tried writing poetry in August-September 2001 when I was laid up after a heart attack scare (it wasn't a heart attack; something else entirely). I discovered I could write it and I liked what I wrote. Much refinement and growth has happened along the way.

I'm not sure I'm ready, at this point, to indulge in the self-reflection/introspection required to answer your last point. Perhaps later.

NDG

I was introduced to poetry in school (well, apart from nursery rhymes and song lyrics) and I liked it well enough. Edwin Muir's 'The Horses', the WWI poets caught my imagination, but I didn't really become a reader until several years later. I woke up in my roommate's bed. He brought me a cup of coffee and asked me if I read poetry. "Not really." "Then you're an idiot," said he, and proceeded to read me his favorite poems for a couple of hours. Lots of Neruda and Baudelaire, Plath and Whitman, Bukowksi and Ginsberg. Heady stuff, and I hadn't heard any of it before. Two of the most memorable hours of my life. The switch had been flipped. Irreversibly.

I don't think there was a switch for me. I came at poetry through music. Not playing music, listening to it. I was always interested in the story being told in the song. If the words had no meaning or there were no words, it wasn't for me. I have a notebook with the words of a bunch of songs that took on powerful meaning for me. Whether I began writing my own words before or after recording those, I don't know. But for me, it all began with words and story in a poetic format. Some of my earliest poems came with melodies. I was a teenager finding my voice, learning my own tune.

I'd have to agree with Debbie. Music with meaning is what brought me to the art of the written verse. And Poe, Frost, Tolkien, etc.
Though I must say, I never really noticed when it started to flow. I only know that it began, and has wanted for attention ever since.
~Lev

William Haskins said:

it would stand to reason that, for most of us, a switch was flipped at some point.

what did it? when (or at what age)? why do you think it affected you at the time?

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I don't think a switch ever really flipped for me... poetry, reading, writing or composing it has always been something I can remember doing. There have been times that I've stopped and had the inspiration be rekindled or reactivated in some sense, but never due to poetry itself, more because of whatever was happening in my life at the time. I suppose I lean on poetry as an output, or input as the case me be at times -- I lean on it to assist me, to motivate me, indeed to rescue me from depressive moments and ultimately to express myself when the need is high.

When it comes to leaning, there are certain poets that I rely on more than others. Frost, Thomas, Poe and Drummond for when I feel lost or alone; Barnabe, Spencer and Shelley when I feel wondrous, but I lean on any that near should the fancy take me.

William Haskins said:

how do you view that transformation from where you are currently in your life? does it still seem poignant? naive in retrospect? how did it pave the way for the poet you've become?

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My poetry has evolved and adapted with the changes in my life and my personal growth. It's still me, however different or far removed from where it/I was 1, 5 or 10 years ago. I can't feel embarrassment for anything that I've written, and I do enjoy digging out the old tomes once in a while--retrospect and the benefits of wisdom gained from lessons learned are excellent tools when crafting new material, and the insights into myself in the catalog of thoughts, ideas, emotions and moments is priceless.

William Haskins said:

ETA: there's no reason this should be restricted to poets and many reasons why the responses of non-poets would be interesting and useful. so please, for you non-poets out there, feel free to talk about works that have moved you and how they may have impacted your life.

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This I'd also like to know...

... jim morrison. Girlfriend gave me a book of his poems,
along with a skull ring, for my birthday. Up until then, I'd
figured poetry was for sissies. Not so. Also for grr, grr guys.


Well, you asked ;-)

ps And for the record, I've matured (a bit) since then.

Ken said:

... jim morrison.

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Me too.
Then I forgot about it and did other stuff for a long time.
Then Eminem happened.
Words are too cool.

I'd have to say it was a simultaneous hit, from two very different poets.

Oscar Wilde
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I was deeply impressed, in different ways, by their styles and visions. Thomas, Dickey, and Shakespeare, among others, were in the vicinity. But it was Wilde and Ferlinghetti on hand when lightning struck.

Funnily enough, as I wandered away for years, it was another odd pairing that reignited my interest:

Richard Brautigan
T.S. Eliot

Shakespeare, really, I can't bring myself to compare with other poets. Possibly that's a result of the general hagiography applied to him. I mean, Shakespeare:English lit::Bob Marley:reggae, right?

Perhaps flipped on at age 3 with "The Night Before Christmas." I wrote my first poem at 6 and haven't looked back. Switch nearly flipped off in 6th grade advanced lit when we had to dissect Evangeline.
Top 3 for me: Shakespeare, Robert Frost, E A Poe....and the list goes on. I dream about the possibilities of The Road Not Taken.

I love what Ellen Hopkins does with telling her stories in verse. It's just an amazing way to shake up the boundaries, and it's been a huge inspiration to me. And also Sonya Sones, who led me to one of my favorite poems of all time, Paul Verlaine's Il Pleur Dans Mon Coeur. I also have a soft spot for T.S. Eliot's Preludes, despite the fact that it spawned the most over-rated song in the musical theatre repertoire.

The other two poems that have really had a profound effect on me are J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythopoeia -- it's a beast, but seriously awesome, in the literal sense, and Edna St. Vincent Millay's I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart.

Kind of a weird set of influences, I'm not going to lie. But I'm a weird person :3

It was e.e. cummings who made the really big difference, to me.

Before that, I'd read and been interested to varying degrees in the work of Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes (in places), R.S. Thomas (underrated, I think), Betjeman (a little too early/establishment for my taste) and Wilfred Owen.

But e.e. cummings was a whole different world to discover, from which (in a sense) I didn't look back.

Well I wrote poetry before I read Unfortunate Coincidence (Dorothy Parker) but that poem in particular made realize how badass a poem could be. Idk my stuff up until then had been more sad like because of my depression and stuff. But her poem made me realize that it could be outlet for something more.

Emily Dickinson was my first spark, in college. I had always written "journal" type poems, just nightly entries in a diary that I shared with no one but that helped me sort through my thoughts. Then I read this, and it was the first poem that ever felt personal to me, like I knew the one who had written it, like somehow we were friends:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Later, after getting distracted by waitressing, marriage, a second go at college, and starting a family, I rediscovered poetry through the wonderful Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

There's a reason they're so famous I guess

Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes spoke to me and made me see the possibilities and the power of poetry.