Poetry Thursday: Why I Love Poetry

Yesterday I was sitting in the film room of a girls' high school. On the wall were quotes from a movie, which included one from the character Amélie which went something like this: "I like noticing details that no one else sees".

(I am still unpacking, and haven't yet found the piece of paper I wrote the quote on. I did google the names of the characters and found that the movie was Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain which sounds very interesting - I may try and locate it at a video store).

Back to the quote - that seems like as good a reason as any why I love poetry. The first poems that I loved, I loved for their sounds, their rhythms, their music. But at high school I discovered T.S. Eliot. We studied "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It came as a huge shock to me. Lines like "when the evening is spread out against the sky/like a patient etherised upon a table". It was the way the poet had of looking at things that were different to the way anyone else looked at them, that sent a tingle up my spine.

So, it is not just the details that no one else sees, but the fact that poets look at the details in a way that no one else does. And I like to do this too. I may fall far short of Eliot and other poets I admire, but I love it when suddenly I see something in a new light, in a way that seems to be given to me out of nowhere.

Having been away from home for nearly a week, I have a heap of things to do (I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow), so this is a quick post. But I couldn't leave Poetry Thursday without posting a poem, so here is one from my files that seems to fit this week's prompt:

Gridlines

(This poem has now expired)