Fun With Poems

I was thinking the other day about poems. Whenever I come across one, I sort of have an inward-groan feeling, a kind of, "okay, let's get this over with." On a walk recently, I tried to think of a list of poems I have read and still remember. Here's what I came up with:

·        "Not Waving But Drowning," by Stevie Smith

·        "Richard Cory," by I don't remember who

·        "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," by Maya Angelou

·        "The Hollow Men," by T.S. Eliot

·        "The Triumph of Life," by Shelley (mostly because I wrote my senior thesis on it)

·        "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

·        "One Art," by Elizabeth Bishop

·        "Ode to a Grecian Urn," by John Keats (mostly because it seemed we were always studying it and I never got what was so great about that stupid urn—or the poem)

·        "Howl," by Ginsberg (but I didn't like it)

·        A poem my sister wrote, but I can't remember the name

I can tell you the stories most of these poems tell, but not for all of them. And I can't remember more than two lines for any of them.

But, it was fun just thinking of the list, and then indulging in all the memories they brought—where I was when I first read them, how much (or if) I liked them, how much I talked about them in classes, and if I would say the same things now or if my opinions have changed.

How about you?