April Is National Poetry Month!

"Let me surrender with a rhyme
My long and lovely lease of time;
Let me be grateful for the gift
To couple words in lyric lift;
Let me song-build with humble hod,
My last brick dedicate to God. "

--From Rhyme Builder, by Robert Service.

I love the poetry of Robert Service. His story poems are, by poetry standards, pretty macho stuff and sometimes downright politically incorrect. He wrote about war, binge drinking, climbing mountains, hunting, arguments settled with pistols. His poems were lilting, simple and to-the-point, often melodramatic. I spent several weeks of my sixth grade school year lying on my grandmother's floor and reading poems about World War One in Service's Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

Poetry is that way, though. A sort can be found for all types of people. There is romantic poetry for the lover, funny poetry for the mirthful, sad poetry for emo kids. There are even some poets who specialized in horror writing. Poetry, they say, evokes emotion easier that prose, and I believe it. Anyone who can read "Gunga Din" all the way to the end without choking up just a LITTLE is tougher than I am.

I just recently learned to run circulation reports, meaning that I can see what checks out and what doesn't. It's sad to say, but poetry seems simply to not be very popular anymore. There aren't Robert Frosts or Carl Sandburgs visiting talk shows or doing appearances on BookTV, and poetry has a bit of a bad reputation as being the pursuit of cultural elitists... But poetry isn't completely passe' yet; America still has a poet laureate and newspapers still run poetry contests occasionally. But the light is a bit dimmer than it once was.

So, this month, consider reading or writing some poetry. The Chippewa Falls Public Library has a fine collection of poetry, new and old, and the MORE system has, well...more!

Here are some quick links:

American Poetry, Many Types

Poetry

Within those two links, one can follow other links all over the face of the subject. Also, be sure to tell a student or teacher about the Library of Congress' Poetry 180 Project. It's an effort to get English students to read a poem per day throughout the school year.