It's National Poetry Month: Let the Fun Begin

Anyone who knows me well knows I get a kick out of National Poetry Month. I'll admit that, like Black History Month or Women's History Month or Men's Health Month--or any of those other celebrations--a month isn't long enough. Not really. But it's a great opportunity to introduce--or reintroduce--poetry to those who may not consider themselves fans, while those of us who love poetry can revel in an exces.. With that purpose in mind, I plan to read poetry voraciously this month and to report on what I read. I will also be looking for chances to hear poet's read their works, starting tonight at Caldwell Community College in Hudson, NC, where NC Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bower will be reading and tomorrow at noon when she'll be joined on campus by her predecessor in the post, Kathryn Stripling Byer. If you need other ideas for celebrating the month, check out my guest post at Poetic Asides. I invite your ideas and reading suggestions as well. Check back through the month for fun links too.

It's National Poetry Month: Let the Fun Begin

Poetry Competing for Reading Time--A Marvelous Dilemma

I often catch myself posting in the wee hours or right in the middle of a busy day--often as a break or distraction from whatever I should be doing at the time (usually grading papers.) This month I have posted less frequently perhaps because my semester is winding to a close and also because I have been participating in the Poetic Asides Poem a Day Challenge. As of yesterday, I am please to report that I met the challenge. Along with a few hundred other people from across the country and around the world, I checked Robert Lee Brewer (Writers Digest) site every day for a prompt.

The goal is not necessarily finely polished poems but good drafts. I first participated this time last year and found the experience so inspirational. A lovely secondary benefit was a little community of fellow poets who shared and responded to one another's poetry. This year when the initial days' posts numbered up to 1000, we were a little overwhelmed. After all, we were accustomed to reading all the posts every day and sending out kudos to the ones we loved.

To keep this active participation alive one of the "regulars" organized a Facebook subcommunity. The first person online each day started a message in the inbox to all of the fellow poets, and we posted there. It has been a delightful experience. We range from Germany and Spain and Mexico to Florida, North Carolina, California, Minnesota, and parts unknown. The conversations have extended beyond what we write to our lives, our families, our favorite poets, and more.

Now that April has ended, we have only to wait for the judging--Yes, this year, fifty of the poems will be selected by a hierarchy of judges including thirty professional poets for an E-book. Until then, we are suffering from prompt withdrawal--or at least until Wednesday when Robert starts postly monthly prompts again.

Poetry Competing for Reading Time--A Marvelous Dilemma

Poems You Love by Heart

On this first day of National Poetry Month, I've been thinking of how and when I first encountered poetry. I don't remember my grandmother having quite so many books around the house, but the ones she had struck a chord. I have her copy of One Hundred and One Famous Poems, old enough that many of the poets--Kipling, for example--had dates of birth listed but not death. I remember first lines of "Hiawatha's Childhood" and one of my dad's favorites, "Abou Ben Adhem."

The one my sisters and I loved over and over was "The Duel," the story of the tragic fight between the gingham dog and the calico cat.

The first poem I learned by heart--and still know--was "The Swing," from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. I was fortunate enough to go to elementary school when recess seemed to last forever, and we were turned loose on the old-fashioned playground with a merry-go-round that had a "girl's way" and a "boy's way"--the subject of great physical competitions. We had monkey bars that easily converted into jail cells when we played cowboys. I loved the swings the best--tall metal stands with heavy chains and thick flat wooden seat. In my head, I heard over and over, "Oh how I love to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue. . . ."

The next poem I remember loving most was read to us by Mrs. Flora Hopper, my teacher in both fifth and sixth great: "Skipper Ireson's Ride" by John Greenleaf Whittier (one of the familiar faces from the "Authors" card game. ) We'd beg her to read it to us, just to hear that hilarious refrain, particularly when the poem slipped into the braying dialect of those widows of Marblehead.

Memorization has not enjoyed its finest day in classrooms recently, but I held out, having high school seniors memorize those first eighteen lines of the prologue to Canterbury Tales, the seven stages of man, and the last lines of "Thanatopsis."

While I tell my students that I assign memory work to ward off Alzheimer's, that's only part of the story. I hope they'll learn to love the way poems sound in their heads and feel in their mouths. What I want most is for them to learn the poems not by rote but by heart.

Poems You Love by Heart