Poets on Poetry

Who has not tried to write a poem? The poetic form of words seems to be rather easy. In its basic form, which we learn as children, the rhyming couplet is, in a child’s written and spoken words, pure joy - success! In the hands of a Shakespeare it is magnificent with a reach and understanding that the rest of us enjoy but are far from even attempting. As we listen to various poetic forms, schools and movements we can only react with wonder at how these innocent words are assembled to create symphonies of ideas, wonder and revelation. The emotions they seek to invoke can be anything from happiness to sadness, from love to revulsion. Arnold, Stevens, Keats, Akhmatova, Browning, Herrick, Hood, Killigrew are but a few of the roll-call of wordsmiths who with mere words create ravenous beauty that reveals tender lines and sensitive verse on how and why they are who they are. 01 - Poets on Poetry - An Introduction02 - When I Write Poems by Anna Akhmatova03 - Of My Poems by Thomas MacDonagh04 - An Apology For Her Poetry by Duchess of Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish05 - Sonnet 76 - Why is My Verse So Barren of New Pride by William Shakespeare06 - The Austerity of Poetry by Matthew Arnold07 - Of Modern Poetry by Wallace Stevens08 - Poetry by Claude McKay09 - The Poetry of Keats by George Meredith10 - Future Poetry by Alice Meynell11 - Sonnet 17 - Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come by William Shakespeare12 - Poetic Eggs by Ezra Pound13 - Poem by William Carlos Williams14 - On the Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats15 - Ode on the Poetical Character by William Collins16 - Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem by Alan Seeger17 - A True Account of the Birth and Conception of a Late Famous Poem by Charles Sackville, Earl Of Dorset18 - The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain by Wallace Stevens19 - The Poet and the Poem by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps20 - Of English Verse by Edmund Waller21 - Love, The Soul of Poetry by Anne Killigrew22 - Why, If All Poets Crown Their Love with Verse by Emily Hickey23 - Verse Making Was the Least of My Virtues by Robert Browning24 - The Poet's Love-Song by Sarojini Naidu25 - A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation by Aphra Behn26 - Not Every Day Fit for Verse by Robert Herrick27 - On the Poetic Muse by George Moses Horton28 - Sonnet - Written in Keats by Thomas Hood29 - Sonnet 86 -Was It the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse by William Shakespeare30 - Song in Imitation of Shakespeare by James Beattie31 - The High-toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens32 - Poetry is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens33 - To My Most Dearly Loved Friend Henry Reynolds Esquire of Poets and Poesie by Michael Drayton34 - His Poetry His Pillar by Robert Herrick35 - To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses by Robert Herrick36 - Poem for the End by Ivor Gurney