I think poets are the heroes and heroines of our time. They are the ones who tell it like it is. By crafting reality, even the bitter and ugly of it,into something lyrical or poignant or vivid, they make us wiser, more alert, and more alive.
I write fiction, when I have time and space, but not poetry. I marvel at good poetry, and at good poets. In some ways they are Christ-like, for they take a lot of suffering upon themselves in order to do their work.
Even though I don't like Garrison Keillor much because he makes fun of Unitarians in a not nice way, I truly admire his taste in poetry and enjoy the way he reads it.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/?refid=3
If you listen to The Writers' Almanac, you know that he reads a good poem each day. I rarely hear it, but I receive it in an email, (just click newsletter on the right side of the page) which I enjoy tremendously, and from the email I can link to a sound recording of GK reading... or just read the poem myself. It is a great joy for me each day!!
Here's one of my favorite poems (I have about a thousand):
FERN HILL by Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
