"I took the one less traveled by"

A fabulous line and a good one to inform the way we should live.

That line hits the spot, cuts to the chase, expressed so trippingly in the context of the poem. For me, unfortunately, that happens all too rarely in poetry. I think I have a bit of a blind spot, probably due to having the heavy romantics (mostly Wordsworth) forced down my throat at school. I thought their poetry was terrible, something inward-looking and slightly unhealthy about it, and not a lot's happened to change my mind. What I want from poetry is ideas that are inchoate in my mind that I can't quite articulate for myself, but which the poet can. It only has to be one line, one little spark of an idea, expressed lyrically, a notion that I wasn't able to express for myself. What I don't like is a sense of linguistic strain, all wordy colour but with only shallow ideas.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

Doggerel!


I don't really get poetry, do I! I'm ok with Mozart and Beethoven though...