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Meter and Meaning

I occasionally dabble in poetry and have tried to reflect on what is it that attracts me so much. A concise answer would be I love rhyme and rhythm (and in general playing with words). It fills me with wonderment to read the ingenuity that comes from the self-abiding constraints of a poem {and ofc the emotional/narrative depth (Probably not too dissimilar from admiring the pyramids or any modern architectural/engineering marvel)}.

With my fixation of rhyme as a rubric I could probably explain why I like I do not enjoy blank verse or free verse as much….I mean I dislike blank verse marginally more than free verse. That may explain my aversion to many contemporary poets (even greats like Walt Whitman)…… Why don't I enjoy Sonnets nearly as much as my other preferences? I know not…(I would pick rhyme over meter any day…but its not that Sonnets don't necessarily have a rhyme scheme or even rhythm)

Trochaic tetrameter (STRONG weak x4) is my favourite meter. It has the drumbeat effect… also probably why Edgar Allan Poe is my favourite! (Controlling for the effect of knowing biography of the authors)

Romantic period (both late and early) are my favourites

At any rate poetry is past its halcyon days and one may argue the advent of LLMs have sounded their death knell lol….. (I am as much of an enthusiastic supporter of LLMs as one can be though) I thought to list down poems that stick out in my mind. I run the risk of sounding philistine but I may as well:

"The Seafarer"

I suppose the classic Anglo-Saxon poetry

I like alliteration and stress patterns

I also take (twisted**) pleasure in elegy!

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (Thomas Gray)

One of my favourites

"Kubla Khan" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

I gush over how he uses sound and imagery one day I hope to be as creative

"Canterbury Tales Prologue" (Geoffrey Chaucer)

I do not understand everything but I love how everything rhymes…..I love rhyme

Also It also reminds me of how English people speak and not just English people I can immediately conjure the voice of my Irish friends

"Annus Mirabilis" (John Dryden)

My introduction to Heroic couplets

"Epithalamion" (Edmund Spenser)

I don't know why this particularly sticks out? Just fascinated with wedding during that time but a good representative of renaissance era poetry

"Ode to the West Wind" (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Lyrical and symbolic language at its best

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (John Keats)

"She walks in beauty" (Lord Byron)

Edgar Allan Poe's Collection

  • "The Raven" - narrative poem at its best with strong rhythm!
  • "Annabel Lee"
  • "Eldorado"
  • "Alone"

Robert Frost's Collection

  • "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
  • "The Road Not Taken"

"All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace" (Richard Brautigan)

Quite relevant these days!

"IF" (Rudyard Kipling)

Bengali Poetry

  • "রূপসী বাংলা"
  • "সোজন বাদিয়ার ঘাট"

    a moving narrative poem

  • "কবর"

    My grandma who did not finish primary school had this memorized

    The poem is more than a century old but I have been in person to the village and the graveyard in question…. which incidentally is only few kilometres away from my grandpas house

  • "আবার আসিবো ফিরে"

    had this in textbook…. Still memorable

  • "আবোল তাবোল"
  • "সোনার তরী"

Italian

Italian Poetry Collection →