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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
April 1, 2007 |
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April is the cruelest month,
Breeding lilacs out of the dead land.
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
April is also National Poetry Month, so Just Write will be celebrating with a series of articles on poets, poetry, and anything else that comes to mind. T.S. Eliot (known as “Old Possum” to some) might not have thought so badly about April if he’d had this poem from Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends (Harper and Row, 1974):
OH HAVE YOU HEARD
Oh have you heard it’s time for vaccinations?
I think someone put salt in your tea.
They’re giving us eleven month vacations.
And Florida has sunk into the sea.
Oh have you heard the President has measles?
The principal has burned down the school.
Your hair is full of ants and purple weasels–
APRIL FOOL!
Comments
What can we do to celebrate National Poetry Month? What is poetry really anyway? What ever happened to epic poetry? Is it still unfolding? Where?
Thank you.
Okay, you’ve asked three questions there, at least two of which deserve book-length answers. To celebrate National Poetry Month: read a poem. And visit this blog frequently. (Sorry, just a little self-promotion.) What is poetry? Let me get back to you on that one. Epic poetry…a lot of poets these days write book-length poems, such as Robert McDowell’s The Diviners, or Mark Jarman’s Iris. I would say these are an evolution of lyric poem, but they have epic qualities. That’s my opinion. What do you think?
moth racemiferous illaudatory emmetropia euxenite choragium gladly superornamental
Gerhard du Toit.
http://www.vtliving.com/snowboard/history.shtml
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