On Poetry: In which I am a bad English major

As a child, I was quite the poet. Or so I thought, anyway. I enjoyed poetry for several well-thought out reasons:

1) Poems were shorter than books, meaning I could have my parents read several of them to me before bed.
2) Poems frequently rhymed, making them easier to memorize than books (I was a late reader and preferred to memorize rather than to read).
3) Anne of Green Gables liked poetry. I was raised on Anne of Green Gables.

I had a copy of A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, and I took it upon myself to memorize poems from it on a regular basis (I was particularly fond of Halfway Down). Starting in first grade, I saw talent shows as the perfect opportunity to display my ability to memorize poems. After all, Anne Shirley had given poetry recitations to thunderous applause at the White Sands Hotel in the 1985 Kevin Sullivan production of Anne of Green Gables, so why shouldn't I try to receive the same recognition?

Turns out elementary school children of the '90s just don't appreciate poetry the way everyone did in the movies.

Nevertheless, I maintained my loyalty to poetry and through the end of eighth grade, I was still memorizing poems for fun (as much fun as one can have, that is, mastering Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death) and writing poems to get out all of my middle school angst. I think that every middle school student should be required to write several poems whenever they are feeling particularly emotional, if only so that they will have something to laugh at in ten years.

Unfortunately, poetry and I had a bit of a falling out when I started high school. Though I would still write some (terrible) poetry, I didn't like the whole concept of thwacking poems with a wet noodle in hopes of finding some meaning (I did like Introduction to Poetry as the poem itself seemed to discourage that type of analysis). I had a brief fling with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and I was always happy to flirt with The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (mostly because, you guessed it, they were featured in Anne of Green Gables), but alas, it was not enough to repair my fraying relationship with poetry. Our split was tragically finalized in the latter half of high school, when I lost all patience with love sonnets that found it necessary to rhyme "love" with "prove." I exaggerate not: From the Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

Had I been a practical soul and decided to to study nursing, like my mother, or political science and economics, like my father, I could've gone on to live a perfectly happy existence without any further attention paid to poetry. Instead I decided to study English. I was able to avoid poetry-centric classes for the most part. I was not, however, able to avoid my guilt at being a bad English major. I was supposed to like poetry! If an English major couldn't appreciate it, then really, who could? Was there any hope for me?

It appeared, last fall, that there was. My philosophy professor introduced me to a fabulous poem by Mary Oliver, The Summer Day. The last two lines (where the speaker asks "What is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?") give me goosebumps. A breakthrough! I had found a poem not mentioned in Anne of Green Gables that I was fond of! Finally I could embrace poetry and be the outstanding English major I'd always known was hiding inside me somewhere.

This was the plan until last week. Last week I decided to read an entire book of Mary Oliver's poetry in order to boost my ego about how I read poetry for fun. This failed miserably. There was one poem, ONE, in the whole book that I did not find entirely useless. Plus all the poems were about gardens and woodland animals and clouds, and I'm a city girl. The keys to my heart are concrete and public transportation and sirens and skyscrapers.

It appears that poetry and I are not yet reconciled. Is there hope for me yet? Any poems I should be reading that will lead to my breakthrough? Any poems you particularly love or hate?