Mindy Withrow

Introduction to Poetry

The Academy of American Poets has been celebrating National Poetry Month every April since 1996 (also celebrated in Canada in April by the League of Canadian Poets). I’m not a big keeper of such observations, but I’m all for encouraging greater poetic literacy. Here are a few resources if you want to join in:

See the Academy’s list of 30 ways to celebrate, including “put a poem on the pavement” and “buy a book of poems for your library.” Also see their tips for teachers [and homeschoolers] and tips for librarians, or subscribe to the Poetcast

Introduce a kid (of any age!) to ShelSilverstein.com.

To learn more about a great poet, read Roger Lundin’s excellent biography Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. To become a great poet, read Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual.

Send your bills and birthday cards with the new Longfellow postage stamp.

And before you read another poem, take this “Introduction to Poetry” refresher by one of my new favorites, Billy Collins:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

(from Sailing Alone Around the Room, Random House, 2001)

01. April 2007 by Mindy
Categories: News, Resources | 10 comments