Saturday, September 26, 2009

A Little Plug For Poetry




This is my little spiel on how much I love poetry and at the same time it is a little plug for a few of my friends. They have recently begun a website called the Daily Poetry Club. For anyone who is an aspiring poet or really just feels like letting their creative, poetic juices out of the corners of their minds they've been hiding in, sign up and start writing! You don't have to be good, everyone is very supportive. Although the little thumbs up/thumbs down button at the bottom is a little unnerving people don't push those too much unless you're off topic. And let me just say here, don't go off topic. I almost lost my membership due to an incident with this. I luckily sweet talked the president into letting me stay. Phewf.

Now on to my love for poetry. A good chunk of the things I read come from my big sister. It's taken me a few years to realize I don't really care if I'm following in her footsteps. Our brains are far too similar for me to pretend I don't like all the same stuff she does. I even stole the idea for that picture of my books from her.  As we've gotten older it's been nice to see her copy me every once in awhile as well. I steal her favorite books, she copies my haircut; I choose the same major, she begs me to take her shopping. This list makes me feel superficial... ANYWAY. Geez I get off topic so easily. The point is that she introduced me to a little Billy Collins, whom I have quoted below. After a lesson in my Shakespeare class I decided suddenly that I was going to be a poet. She figured if I was going to write it I should have a little more of it to read. The one book I had wouldn't cut it apparently. She made me fall in love with the poem "Marginalia" which I have taken the liberty of copying a few stanzas of.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.


Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.


And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.


Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page


A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Billy Collins
Sailing Around the Room
Marginalia
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/marginalia/

4 comments:

  1. Aw, thanks for mentioning me! I love that I can pass all my favorite books along to you. I have several more that I'm handing to you once your semester's over!

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  2. Yeah, you're really going to have to hold on to those. Catching Fire set me back a bit as far as homework goes... If only I had a little self control. I'd probably be in bed right now if I did.

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  3. Yeah, me too. I stayed up until 3am Friday night finishing reading for my critique group Saturday that I had put off so I could read Shiver last weekend. Plus I still haven't given feedback to half of my students yet . . . (I suppose reading can get you in trouble)

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  4. Only if you're a super nerd. Which we both are. Yet another thing we have in common.

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