National Poetry Day

Yesterday (but we're going to pretend it's today) was National Poetry Day. Every year we are supposed to get excited by poetry one day in October and every year it kind of passes me by. I've always had a bit of an unfair dislike of poetry but most likely that's just down to me spending hours learning about Seamus Heaney's potatoes or maybe it was the fact that somehow an A Level discussion of Shakespeare's sonnets led to my teacher talking to us about Shakespeare's interest in elephant penises. No, I don't get it either, and quite frankly I'm still pretty confused and freaked out.

Far away from elephant sex organs, though, this year's poetry theme is "Stars". Pretty, no? I can think of lots of poems about stars and when it comes down to it, poems themselves are ok really. I still think I was right to avoid as much poetry as possible at university - I can't be doing with reading the ENTIRE Rime of the Ancient Mariner before considering the dramatic effects of iambic pentameter tetrameter watsit as well as each and every caesura - I have since found enjoyment in reading poetry purely (as, I think, many were meant to be read) for pleasure.

I've already shared one of my all time favourites, Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy - there are stars in that one, sad stars. You can read that here, and I really hope you do.

Arguably the most famous poems featuring stars are To the Evening Star by William Blake and Bright Star by John Keats, which a few years ago inspired a film on Keats and the love of his life who, it is thought, the poem was written for.

To the Evening Star by William Blake

Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves; and, while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And the lion glares thro' the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover'd with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence

Bright Star by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- 
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

If all these love sonnets don't do it for you, why not read some poems by some pervy old men like Rochester and John Donne - The Flea by Donne and A Ramble in St James' Park by Rochester are quite fun... but nothing about stars I don't think I'm afraid.

Anyway, since I seem to have given up on stars I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite children's poems:

Colonel Fazackerley