"When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" by Walt Whitman

"When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the

lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

I like this poem because it shows how people can occasionally focus too much on the complicated parts of life. The astronomer and his colleagues are all focused on simply increasing their knowledge base about the stars, and don't pay much attention to the stars themselves. Meanwhile, the narrator finds that the lecture is too much for him. Unlike the astronomers, he is able to go outside and marvel at the stars on a clear night, without worrying so much about all the science going on behind them. Sometimes simplicity makes it easier to enjoy the little things in life, such as looking up as the stars.

"It is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."-William Carlos Williams

What this quote is saying, in my opinion, is that poetry provides something that can't be found anywhere else in life. When it says men die miserably every day, the word "miserably" is key. The do not actually die; this is only figuratively speaking. Rather, part of their person is dying. The happiness and fulfillment they could obtain from reading poetry is lost when they do not read it. In other words, "a life without poetry is a life unfulfilled."