Breakfast out at…

Very unfancy but very good food.

Because of the insistence of several (or fewer) fans of poetry, I have revised my introductory List of Poems. This list is supposed to be a guide for the normal person, a person who might be developing an interest. It is not intended to be a definitive list of great poetry, and there is no doubt that many great poems (especially those revered by English majors) are not included. It is intended to help incomers find a path through the weeds. The list is just a list of titles, not links, so anyone interested in reading all this great stuff will have to turn to books or search online and download.

And I think that to transfuse emotion—not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer—is the peculiar function of poetry.
A. E. HOUSMAN

When we read Kipling we can usually say,
"That is just how I feel." Of course there is nothing "wrong" with that, but, when we read a great poet, we say, "I never realized before what I felt. From now on, thanks to this poem, I shall feel differently."
W. H. AUDEN