A Love For Poetry

Longfellow, Whittier, Whitman, James Whitcomb Riley and Eugene Field; Dickinson, Millay,  Kilmer, e.e. Cummings and  Ezra Pound. Familiar names to me  just  like  Christy Mathewson, Dizzy Dean and Babe Ruth are to baseball fans.  That’s because from  the time I was a very little girl  my mother would read poetry to my  brother and me  - sometimes  during the day or after dinner, but always at bedtime.

I didn't understand  then about quatrain (four lines), tercet (three lines) or couplet (two lines),  nor did I know about  pure rhymes, slant rhymes or internal rhymes -  that would come much later. I only knew it was soothing and sweet to hear the sound of my  mother’s voice as she read about The Duel  between the gingham dog and calico cat., The Barefoot Boy kissed by strawberries on the hill, and Psalm of Life:

Let us then be up and doing

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait

 Because my mother so lovingly shared her fondness for poetry with me, I grew to have the same affection for reading poetry . I  found I liked poetry as story, and fitting words together like pieces of a puzzle.   One of my first attempts at writing a  poem  was when I was nine years old, and my fourth grade  teacher, Sister Mary  Wahlburg   had all of her students  compose a  non-sense verse. Here’s mine:

If I were a fish

I wouldn’t live in a dish

But in an aquarium

I’d play spish, spash, spish

If I were a goat

I’d wear a furry coat

Nibble on green grass

and drink from a glass

I thought it was brilliant, as only a nine year old can,  and made a special copy  to  give to my  grandmother Cooney for Christmas that year.  She  raved about it, telling me it was a wonderful poem, and encouraged me to write more. Now , that’s a grandma’s love for sure.

In recent years  my dad gave me the book,  How to Write Poetry .  He inscribed it,  To Kathy, my favorite poet (Now, that’s a dad’s love for sure),  I read in this book: Sometimes a few beautiful well-constructed  lines are more powerful than any thousand page novel could possibly be. So this book challenges you to always seek the few beautiful well-constructed lines.  My Love, Dad 

On the inside cover dad  made a few more  helpful  notations; Guidelines  he picked from the book:

*  Show joy, awe & love

*  Every word in a poem plays a role in creating rhythm

*Be creative, not careless

*Where do you begin ? Begin at the beginning with a thought or a phrase

*Poetry is personal and there isn’t a right or wrong way to write a poem.

I’m a lot older than nine now, but I still  write prose, poetry and essay, and because I’m no longer nine , or 39 or 59 I don’t think my writing is  as brilliant as I did when I was in the fourth grade,  but  that doesn’t stop me. I write on !

postscript: April is National Poetry Month.  Be kind to a poet !  To view my blog Solitude, Salvator and Ella Wheeler Wilcox  go to  http://writingnorthidaho.blogspot.com/2011/04/solitude-salvator-and-ella-wheeler.html