advice

Yesterday's daily email from the Academy of American Poets seems to be written just for this poetry week at The Creamery. In it, they shared Pamela Spiro Wagner's piece, How to Read a Poem. It's lovely.


How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
and don't even notice,
close this manual.



I want to tell you how much poetry means to me - how it holds a line directly to my soul, can speak to me when nothing else can. I want to tell you how I consume poetry like chocolate chip cookies or vitamins or tall glasses of water. I want to tell you that poetry is misunderstood. That it is deeper and easier than anyone supposes. I want to tell you that poetry can calm and quiet and excite and please and anger and irritate----

I want to tell you about poetry. But to do so without poetry wouldn't be right. I will offer Ms. Wagner's line instead:
To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.



Comments are still open for your own poetic efforts here. You might just want to visit to read the offerings already there. They are FANTASTIC. The random winner will be picked end-of-day Sunday to receive a care package (chocolate? jelly beans? a batch of my chocolate chip cookies? alice's favorite honey bunny grahams? a little bit of each?) from one Whimsy. Happy poem-writing!