The Cruelest Month*

I woke up this morning full of thoughts and ready to write. By (Amelia's) naptime I am worn out. I have lost all of my energy. She has been on full speed since the moment she woke up. We heard her in her crib yelling "No! No!" As soon as she got out of bed she wanted to "See! See!" everything in her path. We spent at least 5 full minutes naming all the items on a high bathroom shelf. The moment she came downstairs she was off and running. It took about five more minutes for the floor to be covered with Cheerios, baby dolls, and crayons.

Anyway. It was a good morning, just nonstop.

Oh and on the weaning front I decided it was better to cut back a little more quickly than I originally planned. Yesterday Amelia nursed only 4 times, remarkable since we went to toddler yoga--the last time we went, she nursed about 150 times in 45 minutes. Today she has nursed only twice, one long session right when she woke up and a short session when we came downstairs. If I stay on track from yesterday she will only nurse one more time, around 5:00 pm.

SOOO--seamless transition between breastfeeding and poetry--it's officially National Poetry Month. I am sure celebrations are abounding. I have been having a hard time deciding what to write about for my first post. I thought I might start with why I wanted to mark this month on my blog. For one, I don't think poetry gets enough attention. I think it is misunderstood as too hard, something mysterious and inscrutable. And to be honest--some of it is. But I think I also have been trying to figure out how to integrate more poetry into my own life, in which I exist primarily as a Mom, aka Homemaker. For pretty much all of my previous life, at least since late high school, literature in general and poetry in particular have been my main focuses, something I spend much if not most of my time reading, thinking about, studying, and teaching. But now... not so much. And, despite the fact that I have a graduate degree related to poetry, sometimes I feel lost answering people's basic questions about poetry in my life. These are questions like what kind of poetry I write, who are my main influences, even who are my favorite poets. So I guess I want to explore some of those questions here too.

Today, though, let's read some poems. Poets.org, which is a website I love, has collected a group of poems about poetry. A good place to start, I think. I am going to link to a few of them, and use these examples to explain some of the reasons I love poetry.(Note: any time the text is a different color, you can click on it to see the website I am linking to.)

I love poetry because it so often lets you connect seemingly unconnected things in a way that is often magical. In this poem by Sharon Olds, "Take The I Out," the title alludes to the idea that the personal self, or "I", doesn't belong in poetry. But in the poem, the I quickly becomes something else (while also remaining the first thing). And the end it becomes something else again.

I love poetry because it can let you create an entirely new universe. In this poem by John Brehm, "The Poems I Have Not Written," the title launches the poem into a world of hypothetical, of "ifs" and "mights" that lets the speakers live, for the space of the poem, somewhere else. Plus, it's funny.

And, despite what I said before, I love poetry because sometimes it IS mysterious and hard to figure out. The sad thing is that poetry tends to be taught in a very analytical way, as though poems had one right answer. As a (former?) teacher myself, I see the value in helping students learn to puzzle through poems, and one important way of doing that is helping them find in poems what others have found before them. However, an equally important skill is imaginative thinking. Let this poem, "And It Came to Pass" by C.D. Wright (who is one of my favorite poets for mysterious images and sentence fragments) mean whatever it means to you. And if parts of it don't make sense, let it not make sense. Read it--maybe read it aloud. And let it be.

If you have more time, read some more of these poems about poetry. And there is still time to send ideas for guest posts! Until tomorrow... happy NPM.

*A note on the title: if you have a couple of hours and a good tolerance for migraines, see this webpage. I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist the allusion.