You've Got to Pick a Poet or Two

Shamelessly borrowing from Fagin for the title of this post, but it seemed to fit the purpose perfectly! You all know how much I adore books and literature in general, vintage books even more so, but quirky little volumes like these are dream finds for me. Edgar Allan Poe sums up my thoughts on poetry 'Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words' - whenever I need to escape into language it is the ideal distraction. Getting lost in rhyme and meter comes so easily and before I know it I'm swept away on a lyrical tide, all woes long forgotten. On a good day poetry is a dappled light filter over an already pretty picture, on a bad day a transporting mechanism that takes me elsewhere entirely. So many people write poetry off after exhausting, analytical sessions in GCSE English and I can't say I blame them - the life and rhythm are reduced to bullet points and bludgeoned slowly to death. Try picking it up once again when the memory of those agonising double periods is dulled though, and I'm sure you'll find something with a brand of magic that appeals to you. Because that's what it can do - pick out beauty and wonder, love and loss, a huge range of human experience and give it breath in a way that moves you. I've always thought that music is what feelings sound like, whereas poetry is emotion on paper. 

My iPhone is fantastic, having Shakespeare's entire body of work in an app is great, but it really can't touch the charm of these two little books. If you've ever read Sense and Sensibility you'll know that Willoughby has plenty to answer for, but I do have to appreciate a man who carries sonnets in his jacket pocket!