I like old-school lyrics. Meaning  from around 1685 or later.

Do you like poetry? What kind  – what poets?

I can’t stand most modern, academic esoteric intentionally cryptic free verse. Who reads that stuff anyway? Forget those weak little ditherings in the margin of New Yorker and Atlantic – how boring. And although I once believed in it, I grew out of stridently  political agit-prop years ago as well.  Give me real poetry please!

I was forced to analyze poetry in school and I resented it.  Maybe a few lines here and there [E.E. Cummings, Ogden Nash] were amusing but it was nothing I ever chose to read on my own. Years later I got turned on to French poets like Baudelaire, G. de Nerval, Rimbaud and others who had some great hypnotic rhythms and rhyme combined with astral imagery and intense feeling. I began to realize that I did like poetry – that kind at least. Later, stranded in the Arizona desert with the New Oxford Book of English Verse [1250-1950…new indeed!], I found great treasures. Many of them I have posted, and will continue to post here for your enjoyment.  I discovered that being alone in  the  desert was the ideal way to develop appreciation for poetry. This was in the late 80’s to mid 90’s before the age of cyber-connectivity had infected me.  After my mind cleared  from the barrage of  stimuli  considered  normal, I found that I was reading these old works with new perception. It was like actually communing with the mind of the writer, no matter how distant [or near] in time. It was a spiritual realization for me. Perhaps some of you have also experienced that realization – maybe you are so blessed that you don’t have to live in the desert as I had to reach that state of cerebral clarity. In this age of rampant pragmatism and commodified common-sense, it is almost shameful to confess that I love poetry.
Do you also hesitate before divulging your love of poetry?