Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Day 1: Carpe Diem- El Dorado

What is poetry? Who can be a poet? Why write poetry?
Three questions I think that can only be answered by living, not from a textbook. Because of this I have decided to start this project where I try to learn what poetry really is. I fancy myself a poet-in-training but in reality I don't know much about poetry except for the stuff I have learned about it in my English classes, where a poem is taken and broken in bits until it sometimes becomes unenjoyable to read poetry, always being aware for symbols that may not even be there. This is my journey trying to see the other side of poetry and learn from the masters: Keats, Poe, Dickinson, and much more...
My plan for this journey is that I'll daily put up a poem that I have recently read and enjoyed to share it with others. I might post my own stuff as this goes but it won't be a regular thing for these first few months. This is all free spirited, in a way. I don't have much of a plan for it. I just want to get myself and others to read more poetry and learn to enjoy it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed: in your free time without homework on it.
You may be wondering about the title of this blog (inspired by the movie The Dead Poets Society). I feel that even though people are dead what they left here on Earth is to be enjoyed. I don't think of those poets as being fully dead because their words are still being read today.
Below is one of my favorite poems up to date which is by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe is always an interesting read but my favorite thing that he wrote is "El Dorado", a poem where a knight spends his years obsessed with the search for this city of gold. It reminds me a little of the story of Don Quixote but also what an obsession can do to someone.

El Dorado
by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight,
   A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
   Had journeyed long,
   Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

   But he grew old,
   This knight so bold,
And o'er his heart a shadow
   Fell as he found
   No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

   And, as his strength
   Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow;
   "Shadow," said he,
   "Where can it be,
This land of Eldorado?"

   "Over the mountains
   Of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
   Ride, boldly ride,"
   The shade replied,--
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


Do you have a poem you have written you want me to read and maybe post?
Are there poems you recommend me to read? Please, write it down in the comments!

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