The Allure of Poetry

As we near the end of April, it’s important that we continue to honor the beauty of poetry. Many people may have been turned off by poetry in grade school because they had to read poems repeatedly to figure out what the poets were saying. However, modern poetry tends to be more accessible, with less of a tendency toward rhyming lyrics. While it might be entertaining to be inspired by iconic poets of the past, modern poets write what is more commonly called “narrative poetry,” which are essentially poems that tell a story.

Poetry has been in and out of my life for nearly five decades. As a teenager, I devoured the poetry of spiritual scribe Kahlil Gibran and poet and singer-songwriter Rod McKuen (I think I had all his books). Recently, I Googled him and was shocked to learn that he was 81 years old, almost the same age as my mother. For some reason, I thought he was closer to my age because so many of his sensibilities resonated with me when I was a teenager. His poems seemed so much more hip than how I remember my mother back then. McKuen’s website featured some of his unpublished poems, and I couldn’t resist reading them. The first one that caught my eye was, coincidentally, “Age is Better,” which begins like this:

I have been young, a fresh faced sprout,

with agile legs, a muscled arm and smile