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a poetry primer

I wrote this post forever ago, and while National Poetry Month ended yesterday, you can never spend too much time reading poetry so I'm posting this now (see also: spring blog-drafts cleaning)! A while ago, I made a habit of carrying a volume of poetry with me to read in spare moments (waiting in line, when I arrived early to something, etc.) and I have slacked off from this, but need to resume the habit.

A couple years ago I had a poetry night with some friends in honor of National Poetry Month (April!). We each wrote a poem in advance to share, wrote more on the spot, and read them aloud to each other; never have I experienced anything so nerve-wracking!

About that time I had a reawakening to poetry. I have always had a fondness for essays, and I soon realized that poems have the same ability to sate your literary appetite; they provide you with a sense of completion and accomplishment even after reading only one. I love that poems are a starting point—you read a few lines, and then while mulling over the words and language of the poem, you can contemplate its meaning however objectively or subjectively you choose.

Back when we held a poetry night, one of my friends asked me for a list of poems he should read. I started compiling a list which eventually became the list below. It is fairly limited in scope, mainly focusing on English-language poets (the notable exceptions are Dante and Neruda) and many poems in this list favor more classic forms and traditions of poetry. Of course, this is just a starting point, and you can count on more poetry lists to come.

to begin:
Billy Collins - Introduction to Poetry

Mary Oliver - Wild Geese
my very favorites: Goldenrod, Peonies, Going to Walden

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - excerpt from Song of Hiawatha

Shakespeare - Sonnet 116 (à la Sense & Sensibility; we also memorized this in my high school dramatic speech class where my friend Brianna and I were the resident gushing Austen fans)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Frost at Midnight

Dante Alighieri - Inferno, canti 1, 3, 5 (plus Roberto Benigni)


Billy Collins - First Reader
(also: Schoolville, Forgetfulness, American Sonnet, Insomnia. Basically he is a rockstar poet)


Phyllis McGinley - View from a Suburban Window [I read this in an anthology that I have and loved how it is a play on the Milton poem above, but I cannot locate the full text online due to copyright issues. I don't want to take it out but I apologize for the lack of URL].

John Keats - On the Sonnet


Langston Hughes - Theme for English B

W. H. Auden - Musée des Beaux Arts (one of my favorites in high school)

Elizabeth Bishop - One Art

William Butler Yeats - When You Are Old

Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Sonnet 43

Pablo Neruda - Ode to Bicycles

Ogden Nash - A Word About Winter

T. S. Eliot - The Old Gumbie Cat (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, illustrated by Edward Gorey)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott (a long narrative poem, for Anne fans)

Emily Dickinson - I'm Nobody! Who are you? (one of my childhood favorites; there seem to be two versions with slightly different wording—I grew up on the banishment version)

Emily Brontë - No Coward Soul is Mine

Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven

Alfred Noyes - The Highwayman (also for Anne fans and LOL @ terrible video quality)


not a poem, but an essay about poems which I love: "Scorn Not the Sonnet" by Anne Fadiman

Happy birthday, Lucy Maud Montgomery!

I love love love today's Google doodle.

a list (and some links) about books


I have a number of book related things that I have come across lately(ish) and now that they have reached a critical mass, I give you this list:

A. I love this book mural which is located in an alley/courtyard just behind a used bookstore in Salt Lake. I'm so curious about who selected the books (likely the artist) and why they did so. Did they pick their personal favorites? Have they read all of these books? I'm so intrigued, as I have only read a handful of the pictured titles and there were a number of books that I was not familiar with at all. Which books have you read? I can claim The Grapes of Wrath (obscured by a tree), Brave New World, The Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Cat in the Hat. Children's literature for the win.

B. I read this fascinating article in Forbes last week, "Kids Don't Read Books Because Parents Don't Read Books." The author Shapiro examines the oft-touted argument that kids don't read because they are inundated by technology. While there is certainly some truth to that, he posits that kids don't read because the adults in their lives do not read; children model behaviors they see in adults and if adults don't read, why would they? I thought this was such an interesting view and definitely something I would have taken for granted, as I grew up with parents who read in a home full of brimming bookcases.

C. I love love love this blog post written by one of my professors at BYU. I completely identify with this level of book-loving.

D. I came across this (one of 5 bajillion) list of "books to read in your 20s." Mostly I like to look at these lists and then pick and choose from them the books that strike my fancy. This list I liked, however, because the author picked really great book covers to accompany each of the titles (example). Fellow book-lovers will recognize the importance of books with good covers. Despite the adage which advises against judging by a cover and metaphorical implications aside, I frequently do judge books by their covers. (M and I agree this is the best cover of A Passage to India)

E. Speaking of books with good covers: Rifle Paper Company meets several books that I love. Yes please.

 . . . . 

I didn't realize until partway through writing this list that I had started ordering it with ABC as opposed to a numbered list. How literary.



EDIT: I forgot one: F. Chipotle just announced some new packaging as part of their "Cultivating Thought" series—they will print quotes and words by well-known contemporary authors on their cups and bags. As someone who usually reads whatever is in front of me when seated at a table in a restaurant, I love this.

I remain, respectfully yours, Anne Shirley

[Early] this morning as I was saying a quick blessing over my breakfast, I caught myself saying something about sleeping well.

Vain repetitions?

Maybe.

Or maybe somebody's just tired.

weekend photos

 Erin and I were very much in need of an adventure, so we spent our Saturday afternoon exploring a couple of antique malls. We found some useful things, as well as a lot of things that were...let's just say they were not so useful.
 (This photo reminds me of Anne.)
(a Christmas lantern. Not so useful.) 
(a stethoscope... maybe useful?) 
(binoculars...dizzying)

This is from a different shopping excursion, in which Melissa found these fabulous gold platforms. Yup, those are pretty useful (obviously).

I hope that your weekend was full of useful things. And if it wasn't, I hope you had a good time with those not-so-useful things. (because they have their place.)

film. circa 2002.

i found these photographs quite recently....they're from when i had a film camera (summer 2002). they make me so happy!

[the ranch -- utah]

[cadillac moutain -- acadia national park, maine]



[west point lighthouse, prince edward island, canada]

p.s. we stayed in this lighthouse for a night!! not the tower itself because that is essentially a staircase; but we got to go up and see the light, and we stayed in the room all the way on the right of the attached building (our window is visible in this picture). i'm pretty sure i slept on the floor of our room in a sleeping bag. but it was COMPLETELY worth it. the canada family vacation (slash we hit up all of the northeastern states on the way/way back too) was one of my all time favorites.

what were some of your favorite childhood family roadtrips and vacations??
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