I loved poetry from the time I learned to read, but I was very unfocused in my exploration of the genre. My dad still has his old Norton Anthologies from college, and I used to sit in the rocking chair in his formal living room and flip through them to while away the summer afternoons. Most of the poetry therein was a little beyond me – this was when I was 10 or 12 or so – but I stuck with it, feeling as if each poem contained something hidden and wonderful that my sustained attention would uncover. In some cases, I was right.It wasn’t until I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay, when I was about 13, that I felt compelled to actually read someone’s oeuvre in its entirety. Millay has her poetic faults, but for a teenager, those are her virtues. She writes about love, loss, and death without irony and permits herself to blatantly express her emotions without fear of seeming hysterical or overwrought.
Posts
