National Poetry Month

[katekintailbc]

I didn't have any sort of poem in my pocket on April 18, but that doesn't mean I hate poetry. I admit that I sometimes have to read a poem a dozen times before I start to understand it. And sometimes even then the meaning escapes me. And sometimes, even when I do get a poem, I don't like it. But I definitely have an appreciation for poetry. It's got its place in my heart. Perhaps it's not as big a place as some of my coworkers or the writers in my roundtable who are poets, for whom poetry is both a passion and a necessity. I've always had a secret desire to write an epic narrative poem. I love telling stories and my favorite poems are the ones that tell stories. But every time I sit down and try to write such a thing, I don't get past a stanza or two. I've definitely written some poems I'm proud of, but nothing like some of the amazing poems out there.

Ten of my favorite poems by different poets in no particular order:

• The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes


• The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson


• The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats


• When We Two Parted by Lord Byron


• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe


• Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll


• The Friend by A.A. Milne


• Song of Myself by Walt Whitman


• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost


• The Lanyard by Billy Collins

I suppose a lot of these are pretty popular, recognizable poems. Several of them I set out to memorize when I was a kid just for fun (I still have "Jabberwocky," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "When We Two Parted" completely memorized, but a few lines of "The Highwayman" and "The Raven" sometimes trip me up because I learned them from incomplete versions in songs or recordings). Yes, I was the sort of kid who memorized poems for fun and no other particular reason. Poems like "Cats Sleep Anywhere" by Eleanor Farjeon and the collection Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices really caught me in my childhood and still haven't let go. They felt like the next step everyone takes after nursery rhymes (though I understand those aren't read to children's nowadays the way they were when I was a baby, which makes me sad). And certainly classes in high school and college (especially my Irish Lit course where we read lots of Yeats, Heaney, and poems like The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner) expanded my awareness. But my heart lies mostly with the pre-raphaelites in paintings and the romantics in poetry. And the poems I loved as a kid are still more magical to me than most I encounter now because it feels like they're part of me. Which is not to say that I didn't nearly pee my pants laughing so hard the first time I heard Billy Collins recite "The Lanyard" (in person, no less).

I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not a poetry person, deep down. But poetry has a lot to teach me about finding the exact right word and paying attention to how a thing sounds, not just what it says. There's a place for poetry in my life and when i run across a poem that speaks to me--whether deep or telling a story or fun and rhymey--I take it in and tend to not want to let it go.