Spring
A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist
Recently started a poetry unit with Juniors to close out the year. Always enjoyable to revisit some of my favorites. I read poetry daily, as a writing warm-up, and encourage students to do the same before they begin a piece of writing. A tough sell. “Poetry!” the boy in the back yells, “I hate poetry!”…Might as well say you hate everything beautiful and worthwhile in the world, and that you have no soul…Many boys change their minds when we write Limericks, especially of the ribald variety:
There once was a man from Madrass
Whose balls were constructed of brass
When jangled together
They played “Stormy Weather”
And lightning shot out of his ass
My favorite poet of recent years is Mary Oliver; she reminds me of Frost in her celebration of nature, but her imagery seems more vivid than even that master:
This is what love is:
The dry rose bush the gardener, in his pruning, missed
Suddenly bursts into bloom.
A madness of delight; an obsession.
A holy gift, certainly.
But often, alas, improbable.
Why couldn’t Romeo have settled for someone else?
Why couldn’t Tristan and Isolde have refused
The shining cup
Which would have left peaceful the whole kingdom?
Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests
Of our lives.
Over and over Faust, standing in his garden, doesn’t know
Anything that’s going to happen, he only sees
The face of Marguerite, which is irresistible
And wild, wild sings the bird.