Being that it’s National Poetry Month it’s about time we talked about it. Poetry to some is just flowery words that are laid out on a page in a rhyming structure that was taught to them as a useless elective in high school. To others however they are words of power, of passion and emotions that are kept bottled up so tightly that times they simply need to explode onto the page and take form as they’re read aloud by those that truly feel them. What do you think novels are? Many novels are hundreds upon hundreds of pages of poetry, but the real poets are those that manage to bind their deepest, most unrestrained desires into words that need no further description other than that which is imprinted upon one’s heart and mind.
Real poetry is not meant to be confined.
5. Paterson
This is a story about an unremarkable man that leads a fairly unremarkable life but in many ways is the kind of person that you might want to get to know on the off-hand chance that he could be one of the most interesting people you’d ever meet. He writes poetry that few if any people ever see, and he aspires to little more than doing his job and living a rather simple life. When his poems are destroyed however he feels entirely dejected, as though he might never write again. But when he’s granted the gift of an empty notebook by a stranger, he can’t help but start once more.
4. Troy
Some of the most epic stories began as epic poems that were hardly ever given the time of day in the modern era until the great actors began to gravitate towards them and a director believed that they could make a story out of it. The Trojan War and the story of Achilles and Hector are just parts of the main story that was written by Homer, though the film that was created was much different than the original story, taking what it wanted and leaving much of it behind.
3. Beowulf
The Song of Beowulf is a story that seems to change with every retelling as the narrative of the story usually begins the same way. The story of Beowulf is of a man that sought glory and in doing so sought his own demise. Many heroes within poetic prose seem to suffer the same fate as they often go by the lust for power, for influence, and for riches. In poetry it seems that humans are as illogical as they are in real life.
2. Poetry
An elderly woman decides to begin taking a poetry class after noticing a flyer for it one day. Her life is anything but perfect but it becomes much tougher when she figures out that her grandson took part in the raping of a young girl that committed suicide earlier in the film. Worse yet, she’s diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. Throughout all this however her poetry becomes her lifeline and her one grip on something good and pure in her life.
1. Dead Poets Society
Seize the day, gather ye rosebuds as ye may. Robin Williams put in an astounding performance for this movie as he plays Jon Keating, a professor at Welton Academy, a well-to-do preparatory school for young boys. Unlike the other professors however he doesn’t stick to the four pillars that the students are taught to live by. He allows them to live, to breathe, and the expand their minds in ways that the old, stodgy lessons never could. He teaches them what it means to be alive through poetry, and in doing so broadens their minds in ways that can never be undone.
Poetry is more than just words, it is power on a page that only those that perform it can understand.
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