Why I'm Celebrating Poetry

A lot of people I've encountered think that poetry is pretty, but boring.  Or that it's hard to understand unless you're a poet yourself.  Or that poetry is just fluffy, romantic glop.  I felt that way myself until I went to college.  I disliked almost all the poetry I read for my high school lit courses.  In fact, I avoided poetry whenever possible.  My lit classes made me memorize all kinds of things about iambs and feet and meter and other technical jargon that made poetry about as enjoyable and interesting as scrubbing the kitchen floor.

Then I went to college and made friends with a couple of fellow writers.  They wrote poetry.  They loved poetry.  And their poetry was fun!  Not only that, but I discovered that I could write poetry too.  And it wasn't stiff and formal and dull.  I found that poetry could dance and sway and frolic.  

My second semester that year, I took a class called Poetry and Drama.  Fast-forward to my senior year, and I helped teach Poetry and Drama as part of my internship working for the head of the English department.  Quite a change over the course of four years, from actively disliking poetry to teaching others about it because I enjoyed it so much myself.

And now here I am, fourteen years after that, hosting a month-long blog celebration of poetry.  Pretty crazy, huh?  

But why do I like poetry?  Because it makes me view things in a different way than I otherwise would.  My favorite poems revolve around one small incident or image, something that would get barely mentioned in prose.  Plums, a fence, fog, a few words exchanged between a grieving husband and wife.  Spending time considering small things, fleeting moments, ordinary people.  I like poems that are like a photograph -- I can spend lots of time studying that one captured image and learning things from it, noticing what I might otherwise have overlooked or not understood or ignored.

Of course, there are lots of other kinds of poetry too.  Love poems, epic poems, ballads, and so on.  I enjoy those too.  But the types of poems I like best, and usually write myself, are the intimate little ones that make me pause and pay attention to the little things in life.

However, I don't read (or write) as much poetry as I used to, and so this Poetry Month Celebration is my way of encouraging myself to include more of it in my life.  While I'm at it, I figured why not spread the poem love?  So here we are.  

If you haven't already, please check out the Poetry Giveaway I'm hosting, which runs through Thursday, April 7.  And if you're so inclined, you can copy the Poetry Tag and fill it out on your own blog.  But above all, please go to the Poetry Month Celebration page and see all the cool posts that other bloggers are planning to contribute to this event -- what they've already posted!  If you want, you can sign up to participate too.