How to Eat a Poem
by Eve Merriam
Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.
For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.
The Library of Congress offers a couple wonderful program related to poetry that were designed by our former Poet Laureates.
The Poet Laureate, a position began in 1937, I think, is charged to "serve as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans." During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. They receive a stipend of $35,000 for their year of service. During their one-year tenure, some Poet Laureates create programs designed to foster a love of poetry and a way of broadening the audience for this art form.
One of these programs, called Poetry 180, was designed by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and offers a poem a day for 180 days. This program was designed for high school students - hence the format of 180 days (the length of the typical US school year). Subscribe by email, and enjoy a poem each morning. These hand-picked poems are delicious with morning coffee and a sweet roll. To subscribe, follow the link above the photograph of Billy Collins.
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Today's selection:
Numbers
Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
Another program, called American Life in Poetry, was designed by former Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser for newspapers. A free, weekly column that includes a poem by a contemporary American poet, and an accompanying brief introduction to that poem by Ted Kooser. To have this delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
This week's column:
American Life in Poetry: Column 287
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
I love to sit outside and be very still until some little creature appears and begins to go about its business, and here is another poet, Robert Gibb, of Pennsylvania, doing just the same thing.
For the Chipmunk in My Yard
I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.
Robert Pinsky, another former Poet Laureate, created The Favorite Poem Project. Robert Pinsky this beautiful project during his time as Poet Laureate, where Americans from ages 5 to 97 submitted their favorite poems for consideration. Many were recorded onto video and there are compilations and other materials available.
Be sure to watch fifth-grader Karen Mechler reading Roethke's The Sloth. Okay, perhaps I am partial to confident middle-schoolers. and oh, her hat!! (...sending prayers to the One that I do raise children who are so confident in their fabulousness... )
The Library of Congress Poetry home page offers video and audio records for viewing online, as well as webcasts, resources for teaching, learning, writing and of course, poetry to read.
GO!!
WENT!! and thank you-- i quickly subscribed to these wonderful resources for our integrated arts focus school. i truly appreciate all the valuable information you put out to your readers!
Posted by: Janet | 09/20/2010 at 12:44 PM
loved the poems! Thanks!
Posted by: Christina Rogers | 09/20/2010 at 04:19 PM