SIFAR...nothingness

|| PREFACE ||

Poetry has always fascinated me and there are quite a few poems which I can recite, word to word. I love the rhyme of the lines, the flow of alliterations and the music that the poetic rhythm makes.  As William Wordsworth put it so poetically (??)

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" ( from "Preface to Lyrical Ballads."). 

Remember his poem Solitary Reaper - 'the music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more' Poetry has that effect on me.'

And how about the oft quoted lines from Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" (one the the few I can recite ),

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"

The poem was was first published on March 7th, in 1923. The story goes that Frost wrote this poem in a few minutes, after being up all night writing another. He took a sunrise walk, and got an idea. A tiny idea but with such profound feelings.

And this from a poem that I have read and yet have to keep reading it to soak in nuances:

Another inspiration poem, that is also my personal favourite  'A Psalm of Life (What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist)' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Tell me not in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul

It consists of nine stanzas, each more inspiring than the rest and ends with these lines:

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. 

There are also few of my other personal favourites: An Irish Airman foresees his death by William Butler Yeats ( "Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love" - possibly the mantra of every soldier); She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron; He wishes for the cloths of Heavens, again by William Bulter Yeats ("But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams" - I can never put into words the feelings these lines evoke; the wistfulness, the longing and the hope they convey); The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson (the poem literally sings and the lines, more like a refrain, "For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever" do sound like what a river would sing). Pablo Neruda's 100 love sonnets and of course mystical Rumi (the 13th century Sufi saint whose words on love and relationships- though more like couplets, are simply beautiful)

And the last but not the least - The Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a collection of 44 sonnets of which No. 43 is probably the most famous:

Now to the reader who has stuck with me so far and must be wondering why I am writing about poets, well, I just wanted you to know how much I love poetry. So what ever I attempt to write, under the broad category of poetry, is inspired by the poems I love. They might never ever reach the level of the above works but it is my way of expressing my admiration for the poets.

Finally, as to why the name for this collection - from the above paragraph, it is clear that I do not consider my poems to be much more than nothing but then as the quote on the top of this page goes, it just might give you, my dear reader, something to think about.

love,
Nyna