An idea from the narrator of Nicholson Baker’s book The Anthologist (2009):
Isn’t crying a good thing? Why would we want to give pills to people so they don’t weep? When you read a great line in a poem, what’s the first thing you do? You can’t help it. Crying is a good thing. And rhyming and weeping—there are obvious linkages between the two. When you listen to a child cry, he cries meter. When you’re an adult, you don’t sob quite that way. But when you are little kid, you go, “Ih-hih-hih-hih, ih-hih-hih-hih.” You actually cry in a duple meter.
Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing. We’ve got to face that, and if that’s true, do we want to give drugs so that people won’t weep? No, because if we do, poetry will die.
Tell me you sob. Tell me our poetry lives.
What have you read, writer, that made you weep?
Reasons to Keep Writing 
i read mahmud alaqad, gubran, abu madi, hesse, old as new-time enjoyment, no one same,
I cried when my own self-written
zbs, an encounter with racism in an educational palace
I thought of warmth of strong, manly bodies that were caught as a very good commodity for the slave market.
no educational paths are allowed. in between there are 400 years of history and people quickly forget the fish is in the sea and not in artificial pools,
The same is true if I wanted to help a blind man, he does not want that because he sees it better than other people. thank you soon.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>!!!((*L*));:_;:_;:_!
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All wonderful writers and poets on your shelf.
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yes and no, yes as a schoolboy, I got a painting job from an art teacher, I should get it the word good and the word evil. to paint. Here it all began, looking for book shelves, for solution, it was a great lesson. and no I have no books, (library always open)> in the past> More everything 10 years unintentionally my books have lost? !! .. and I still have shelf in my brains !!!
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Thank goodness for memory.
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I have shown everything in my book and explained part ((three)) why and my book shelf is blurred. !!!
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I have to admit that I haven’t read much poetry. Not nearly enough, at any rate.
However, fiction, and the telling of a character’s toils and challenges has caused me to break down in tears from time to time.
What makes you weep?
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I too have cried for fiction characters.
Parts of Jorie Graham’s poem ‘Reading to my Father’ often have me weeping.
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I’m not familiar with Graham’s work…I’ll go check it out
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Dylan Thomas and John Milton have made me cry. Nothing recently has made me cry, but I haven’t read anything sad or brutal lately.
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Sometimes a poem can rear up, unexpectedly. Just the language or an enjambment can make me come slightly undone. Thanks for sharing.
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The scene from ‘Sons and Lovers’ where Paul’s mother is dying from cancer — I think I’ve got that right — really broke me up. I wrote a poem about it which has been published a few times based on Les Murray’s ‘An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow.’ Perhaps I should find it and post it on my blog
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Pretty much everything our so-called politicians have said for the past three years.
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I really like poetry and have written just a little…nothing spectacular. There are garden verses, supposedly written for children that sometimes make me cry.
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I like that you skeptically say “supposedly” about children’s verse. I agree wholeheartedly. Poetry is poetry. Thanks for being a part of this exploration with me.
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