To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl

What is Poetry?

My understanding is that it is an art of using language for it's aesthetic characteristics rather than the mere contextual literary meaning of the words. Conveying a thought or emotion by garlanding words that give a resonance effect to human ear. Everyone has got their own way of writing poetry, Shakespeare from Elizabethan Era to the Billy Collins of Post-Modern Era or you may call it Contemporary Era. More importantly, to quote "In preliterate societies, poetry was frequently employed as a means of recording oral history and story telling (epic poetry). The Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic which includes poetry, was probably written in the 3rd century BCE in a language described by William Jones as more perfect than Latin, more copious than Greek and more exquisitely refined than either".

I try to wonder why I get to forget things and especially at times like this when I am trying to write something in my blog, I try to remember the right word which is deep in my mind but doesn't often make its way out of my mouth. May be it's called "Literary Amnesia". No wonder Billy Collins felt it, which in turn resulted as a beautiful poem "Forgetfulness".

I have been watching TED for quite a long time, which contains some interesting ideas, innovations by normal people to professionals. The one by Billy Collins recently struck a chord in my heart. At the conclusion of his TED event, he recited a poem on Adolescence. It's funny and read it for your pleasure.

To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl

Do you realize that if you had started building the Parthenon
on the day you were born,
you would be all done in only one more year?
Of course, you couldn’t have done that all alone.
So never mind;
you’re fine just being yourself.
You’re loved for just being you.

But did you know that at your age
Judy Garland was pulling down 150,000 dollars a picture,
Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory
and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room –
no wait, I mean he had invented the calculator?

Of course, there will be time for all that
later in your life, after you come out of your room
and begin to blossom,
or at least pick up all your socks.

For some reason I keep remembering
that Lady Jane Grey was queen of England
when she was only 15.
But then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.

A few centuries later,
when he was your age,
Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family,
but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies, four operas
and two complete masses as a youngster.

But of course, that was in Austria
at the height of Romantic lyricism,
not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.

Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15
or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
We think you’re special just being you –
playing with your food and staring into space.

By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.

Bis Später!!!