When I was in high school, I hated poetry, hated it! By the time my teachers analyzed each stanza to death, there was no joy left, if there was any joy to start with. My fellow students and I were never encouraged to ask how a poem made us feel, how it might touch our lives, cause us to think. Iambic pentameter were the only words I recall from my youthful foray into poetry, except boredom. I didn't pick up a book of poetry for roughly the next 20 years until a friend introduced me to Mary Oliver. Here were poems I immediately related to, which didn't require a third party telling me what they meant. I knew what they meant to me. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~Summer Day You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. ~Wild Geese Poetry became accessible. At least I learned that there were poems in the world which could feel as authentic to my life, as to the person who had written them. I began searching for poets whose work resonated with me, not only in books, but stopping to read a poem in a park, subway, along graffitied walls.... on sidewalks. Early this morning – on the last day of Poetry Month – I walked to nearby Hendrix College to re-read one of my favorite "found poems" on the Poetry Sidewalks, where poems crisscross the length of sidewalks, around corners and under archways. ![]() I found The Gardener, 85 by Rabindranath Tagore beside a bike rack and mouthed the words aloud. Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from the wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look around. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. Then I placed an azalea blossom among the words, as a remembrance for the next reader. May you come across a poem that speaks to you – in your walks, reading, music – or create one from your own heart.
"Open your doors and look around."
7 Comments
Ellie Smith
5/1/2022 04:36:07 am
I too had a similar experience in high school, having teachers parse and analyze poetry to death. But it didn’t make me hate poetry, because I loved poetry. Mother read poems to us, recited the ones she knew by heart. And we had The Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia aimed at children which was not in alphabetical order and included stories, photos f great art, articles about people and places, AND poetry. I spent hours behind the couch reading those volumes.
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Twylla
5/1/2022 09:38:00 am
Isn't it a wonderful idea! I'd be interested to know how they selected the poems. That would be a fun job!
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Beverly
5/1/2022 05:46:19 am
The Poetry Sidewalk stroll seems quite similar to a labyrinth walk—solitary and contemplative yet connective to other voices and footsteps across time. Thank you for sharing that lovely experience.
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Twylla
5/1/2022 09:35:44 am
Thank you, Beverly! I love that comparison, to the labyrinth walk and to voices across time.
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Marilyn
5/2/2022 07:59:07 am
I love poetry! and I love how Hendrix has placed the words of poets under our feet to read as we walk. Wouldn't it be fun to have poetry walks at that campus as well as other places in our surrounding areas to read and talk about the effect the words have on us personally.
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Molly
5/9/2022 10:35:34 am
I felt much like you did during the poetry units in high school English classes but I always wanted to love poetry; to ‘get it’. It was Mary Oliver that opened that door for me also! Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, and Gerard Manley Hopkins are a few other favorites. Haikus have become a fun hobby— the short structure helps me observe keenly and I can remember them easily. Thank you for this lovely post!
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Vicki Longhofer
5/17/2022 07:16:47 am
I love the concept of the poetry sidewalk, Twylla! And Tagore’s poem - that one is like having a conversation with him. Thank you.
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Welcome to my blog!
After writing my books, Labyrinth Journeys ~ 50 States, 51 Stories and The Power of Bread, I knew I wasn't finished writing, or journeying. Please join me as I continue both and see where they lead me (and you!) ~Twylla Alexander |