The poet Billy Collins theorized that babies and children respond quickly to poetry because in utero they are conditioned to the beat of their mother's heart in iambic meter. Nursery rhymes and children's songs capitalize on love of rhythmn. Collins said, "life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us." (Washington Post "Pearls before Breakfast" April 8 2007)
Aung San Suu Kyi spent 23 years as a political prisoner under house arrest in Burma. She says she developed her inner resources by "listening to BBC radio, practicing the piano, learning Japanese and . . .reading Tennyson. I became fonder of poetry than prose". (London Financial Times January 29/30 2011)
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Poetry
Poetry has been on my mind lately because a group of my friends recently had a poetry night. For more than twenty years we have met regularly to talk about books, art, other subjects of interest. We call ourselves the "Inspiritice Society" because we inspire each other.
Every one brought a poem to read. . .ranging from classics to children's poems to contemporary strangeness. I brought my favorite collection, "Good Poems Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor"; others had tattered old editions from grade school or belonging to their parents. We kept thinking of fragments of this and that from the past, looking up snippets on our smart phones and finding the sum total and reading it aloud. Our hostess dressed all in black with a beret on her head - - a true beatnik!
Poetry connects with a different level of consciousness. Last summer I read about a man who always takes a book of poetry on his vacation and reads one a day in the late afternoon. He calls it his "cocktail hour."
Every one brought a poem to read. . .ranging from classics to children's poems to contemporary strangeness. I brought my favorite collection, "Good Poems Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor"; others had tattered old editions from grade school or belonging to their parents. We kept thinking of fragments of this and that from the past, looking up snippets on our smart phones and finding the sum total and reading it aloud. Our hostess dressed all in black with a beret on her head - - a true beatnik!
Poetry connects with a different level of consciousness. Last summer I read about a man who always takes a book of poetry on his vacation and reads one a day in the late afternoon. He calls it his "cocktail hour."
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Snow Storm
The Snow-Storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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