April 25, 2005 - Essentials for National Poetry Month

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Essentials for National Poetry Month
By David Bunch
March 25, 2005

April is National Poetry Month, and iBid is celebrating by sending three poetry recommendations your way. In an effort to include a wide cross section of genres, we’ll look at a classic poem, a modern poem, and an excerpt from a children’s poem.

We’ll start with an older poem written by John Donne in the 17th Century. Donne is best known for his love poetry, but he also provides a beautiful and artistic look at spirituality in his 19 Holy Sonnets. Here is Holy Sonnet X¹:

Holy Sonnet X: Death, Be Not Proud
By John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which yet thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must low
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

A more modern take on human mortality (and, alas, one not as spiritual) is this offering from Sue Ellen Thompson. It is included here because most all of us have had the painful experience of helplessly watching a loved one “rage against the dying of the light” as another famous poet put it. Thankfully, those who are in Christ do have hope after the “blanket” of earth covers us (perhaps Ms. Thompson has never read Donne).

The Blue Blanket²
by Sue Ellen Thompson

Toward the end, my father argued
with my mother over everything: He wanted
her to eat again. He wanted her to take

her medicine. He wanted her
to live. He argued with her in their bed
at naptime. He was cold, he said,

tugging at the blanket tangled
in my mother's wasted limbs. From the hall
outside their room I listened

as love, caught and fettered, howled
at its captors, gnawing at its own flesh
in its frenzy to escape. Then I entered

without knocking, freed the blanket
trapped between my mother's knees and shook
it out once, high above

their bodies' cursive. It floated
for a moment, blue as the Italian sky
into which my father flew his bombs

in 1943, blue as the hat I'd bought her
for the winter she would never live
to see. My father's agitation eased,

my mother smiled up at me, her face
lucent with gratitude, as the blanket
sifted down on them like earth.

Ending on a more light-hearted note is an excerpt from a children’s book titled “Love That Dog” by Sharon Creech³. The book is written from the standpoint of a school child who is struggling to find “poetic” voice. Each chapter consists of a poem that the child has written and provides the reader an insight into what is going on in the classroom and in the fledgling poet’s mind. At first the child has trouble writing a poem and believes that they do not possess the capability to create such a work. But by book’s end, the unlikely scribe has found that poetry is fun and is a great way to express one’s soul and emotions. Interestingly enough, Creech subtitles the book “a novel”.

Here is an excerpt that is interesting because we find that the teacher of the class has introduced the students to William Carlos Williams’ famous poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

September 27

I don’t understand
the poem about
the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
and why so much
depends upon
them.

If that is a poem
about the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
then any words
can be a poem.
You’ve just got to
make
short
lines.

October 4

Do you promise
not to read it
out loud?

Do you promise
not to put it
on the board?

Okay, here it is,
but I don’t like it.

So much depends
upon
a blue car
splattered with mud
speeding down the road.

So there you have it. IBID’s salute to National Poetry Month and to fine poets everywhere.

ninetyandnine.com

Footnotes:

1. http://cs1.mcm.edu/~rayb/hs10.htm

2. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/docs/2005/03/21/index.html

3. Love that Dog: A Novel by Sharon Creech. 2001 Scholastic Press. Pgs 3-4

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David Bunch still dreams of publishing a collection of poems one day. Hopefully, he’ll remember not to subtitle the collection as “a novel”.