A Love Letter To Literature and Poetry
My own acquaintance and relationship with poetry is bound up with acquisition, memorization, and recital. That is: I realized when I was quite young that I could learn poems "by heart," as the saying goes. It was no great hardship for me to commit poems and verses of literary accretions to memory. As Gwendolen remarked in "The Importance Of Being Earnest", it was less a duty than it was a pleasure . Furthermore, I found that this fairly simple attainment could, as well as grant me satisfaction and purpose, win me praise. Seldom a week goes by where I am not complimented in one form or another after demonstrating this trait. This helped make up for my almost feckless inability in the areas of mathematics and mechanics (traits that oddly enough, both of my brothers have remarkable talents for). And, when it came to poetry, I would squirm at the embarrassed clumsiness with which my classmates "read" beautiful lines that they obviously felt were onerous ...