April is National Poetry Month

Dr. Maya Angelou said: “Poetry is music written for the human voice.” April is National Poetry Month and was first celebrated in 1996. It was created to promote attention to the literary form and history of poetry. How can you celebrate National Poetry Month? The Academy of American Poets has a list of thirty ways to celebrate poetry in April:

Read a poem a day – books of poetry can be found at your local library, or there are websites dedicated to poetry by certain authors or on certain subjects. One of my favorites is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

Write a poem of your own – use free verse, make a haiku, write a sonnet, the style doesn’t matter just the attempt. Writing a poem is not as complicated as some people might think, the most important part is being uninhibited and turning off your internal editor. Just write everything that comes to mind, you can edit it later. Choose a style of poetry that fits your subject, research rhyme scheme and meter standards to find out if your poem is a Couplet, Villanelle, or Shakespearian Sonnet.

Add a verse of poetry to your personal email signature – if you stumble across a line you enjoy while reading, share it with others. Make it short and to the point, and always site the source of the line.

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day – on April 17, 2009 carry a poem in your pocket and share it as you see fit with those around you.

Kay Ryan, the current Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009, said: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading."

Democratic Debacle

Things are getting pretty heated in the Democratic race for the presidency. Everyone knows that. Unless, of course, you have been living in a subterranean cave on a tiny island with no outside contact. The thing that strikes me the most is that everyone I have talked to about it is firmly planted on one candidate or the other, no one seems to be waffling like me, and with the Oregon primary in two weeks and it quickly gaining more importance than it’s ever had before, I really feel as if I should set down an official decision for myself.

To be honest, previously when asked I would sheepishly reply that I was a Hillary supporter, but that decision on my part was almost completely superficial. My opinion was based on three things: 1) she is a woman, and hey so am I! 2) If her presidency is anything like Bill’s was it would put us back into a good place as a country (for a moment let’s ignore the whole infidelity thing), it would take us out of the recession in the very least. 3) To be so strong as to cope with Bill’s infidelity under such a fine microscope and keep her head about her, I would have no qualms about her handling the country’s crises in a similar calm and direct fashion. I realize that these things are all opinion and not fact based on my part at all, which causes me to look back at Obama. Obama’s whole platform is change. I think everyone agrees that is what this country needs. He seems to be a strong, even tempered person with strong ethics. But where do we go from there.

Ultimately what it comes down to is: I am an uninformed voter, and it’s my own fault for being that way. What I really want is to know their stance on the issues I care about and what is most important to them. Yeah they can sit there and blabber about education, the environment, and what they will do about the cost of gas, but if really those are all just campaign promises unless they personally feel strongly about it then IT WILL GET DONE. I am currently trying to read through the issues pages on each of the candidates web sites. Hillary’s issues page seems to be arranged in a way that shows what is important to her, Obama’s is in alphabetical order.

I am trying to avoid being influenced by anyone else’s personal opinion and therefore avoiding other political websites for the moment, but we shall see when the time comes.