Weekly Geeks 2010-13: National Poetry Month

For this week's theme, I encourage participants to to help celebrate National Poetry Month by:

• Posting a favorite poem, or
• Reviewing a poem or book of poems, or
• Discussing a favorite poet, or
• Posting a vlog of yourself reading a poem or find a video of someone else reading one, or
• Writing a poem yourself- any form

Though I don't read and study it with the same devotion I do its cousin the novel, I actually do like poetry. I have this little sketchbook that I use to write my favorites in. As with my regular reading, my favorite poems tend be classic and British, from Tennyson's The Splendor Falls and Kipling's If- to Burns' My Heart's in the Highlands and Queen Elizabeth's On Monsieur's Departure. It was REALLY hard for me to narrow it down to just one poem to share with you, but I finally decided to go with an old favorite: Shakespeare. I LOVE his sonnets and this one is (IMO) one of the best. I love how it changes how we think about success. Here is Sonnet 29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

And here is British actor Matthew MacFadyen (Pride and Prejudice, Little Dorrit, A Pocketfull of Rye) giving his interpretation of it. I love how he brings a 400 year old poem to life and makes it just as fresh and modern as the day it was written.