Poetry Through Ages by Michelle

Poetry Through Ages by Michelle - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

The book that has most influenced my life is entitled, “The Best Loved Poems of the American People” selected by Hazel Felleman. This book is a compilation that contains over 575 favorite poems. Many are by well known authors and many unknown yet still just as compelling. Its contents holds poems of love, friendship, inspiration, poems that tell a story, faith and reverence, childhood and youth, patriotism and war, humor, grief, and nature. Whenever I need to lift my spirits I turn to the pages of this book whether I will read, “Be The Best Of Whatever You Are” by Douglas Malloch. If I want to entertain being a hopeless romantic then I will read, “Love” by Roy Croft. If I need inspiration I turn to, “Whatever Is-Is Best” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. When my faith is shaken, “Pray Without Ceasing” by Ophelia Guyon Browning is my go too!
This book continues to bring me comfort and I have read them so often I can quote them by memory to myself when I need a mantra. Books take time to read and often I don’t digest all of their contents. However this book, I can turn to the pages as I need and surprisingly find one I love from my childhood now to my adulthood. A poem I had no connection to read as a teenager I have read and connected with as an adult. For example, now that I am a mother, “Nobody Knows But Mother” by Mary Morrison.
These poems are feelings and thoughts people translated on paper, experiences they lived and discovery they have made about the world and how they relate and fit into it. This has influenced me greatly, I written poetry since being a teenager until now and over the years I share my poems,after all we all have a thought, a feeling, and a story to tell.