Poets: Making Words Rhyme and Not Rhyme for a While Now

Do you all realize the new series of Doctor Who is starting in NINE DAYS? I make no promises about the state of my mind grapes at that time. Fortunately it airs on a Saturday and I basically never update on the weekend, but OH THE EXCITEMENT. Especially since the new companion, Jenna Chipmunk Face, (SPOILERS AHEAD, ME HEARTIES) is wearing a LOT of Victorian clothes in set pictures, and this is obviously the bestest.

My friend with cable is going to be out of town, so it's going to be me. And my laptop. And a livestream of the BBC at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Like FANCY people do.

Now. Poetry. Do we like it.

I have to say, I have something of a prejudice against poetry, and it's probably got a lot to do with not wanting to look like a posing prancing idiot who thinks they just FEEL very intensely. But focusing on 19th c. British lit as I did, College made me take some Romantic lit courses, and all those bastards did was write poetry.

BUT SOME OF IT IS VERY GOOD. Good to the point of me being able to quote it? Hahahahahahaha no.

But some peeps I did not hate:

Lord Byron (I KNOW, he's so skeevy, but he was also hilarious and his Don Juan that I've never finished I enjoyed MUCHLY)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (in college I had an I'm-18-years-old moment in class when I almost cried while reading aloud from the Sonnets from the Portuguese -- I CAN'T HELP IT IF I FEEL THINGS ON A DEEPER LEVEL, GUYS) ((but for serious, it was Sonnet XIV and you need to read it))

Percy Bysshe Shelley (Omg fuck you PB Shelley and your gorgeous words -- wait, has anyone made a PB&J joke about him? IF WE WERE FRIENDS I WOULD CALL HIM PB JELLY ALL THE TIME)

Alexander Pope (he is HILARIOUS because the 18th century was hilarious when it wasn't being Pamela'd -- the grandkids of these people were all "I DON'T NEED YOU AND YOUR LOGIC - I AM GOING TO SMELL FLOWERS" -- but the Enlightenment kids? they are the best)

Christina Rossetti (THE GOBLIN MARKET IS SO NAUGHTY)

Basically I like the Victorians more than the Romantics, but some of the Romantics put words together and it is like "DUDE" because they are so pretty. I'm leaving out Keats, because...he's pretty good, but La Belle Dame sans Merci annoys me because he came up with this literary concept (negative capability) and then wrote a poem to prove it, and it's like "Dude...you can't write fiction to prove your own point. That's like what L. Ron Hubbard did." But he died and left a falsely modest epitaph ("Here lies one whose name was writ in water" -- really, Keats? Really?) and there we go.

I guess I also left out Tennyson. But Tennyson kind of whined a lot, guys.

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