Farewell to the 2010 Poetry Parade

And so this year's Poetry Parade comes to an end. If you've enjoyed reading a poem a day during National Poetry Month, I invite you to continue the fun by subscribing to Your Daily Poem, where you'll get some behind-the-scenes commentary along with each day's poem. You might also want to follow my occasional poetry-related posts at Twitter.

For now, though, here's the final poem of Wordwoman's Scintillating Springtime Parade of Poetry 2010; it's been a blast!

The Reading Mother
by
Strickland Gillilan

I had a Mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.

I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings--
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be--
I had a Mother who read to me.

See more here.

Poetry, Take Two

In a survey sponsored by the Poetry Foundation a few years back, researchers discovered the following:

• 94% of Americans have read poetry at some point in their life, but only 15% read it consistently throughout their life.
• Almost 85% say poetry is hard to understand.
• Almost 81% say poetry is boring.
• Yet more than 70% say poetry helps you appreciate the world around you.

I'm going to connect the dots here and suggest that, based on these statistics, if people understand a poem, chances are they'll enjoy it. That's the premise upon which I based the launch of Your Daily Poem, a website that went live June 1st with the sole purpose of presenting uplifting, easy to understand poetry to people who were not predisposed to like it. And to paraphrase and repurpose Sally Field's worn but fitting cliche, "They like it! They really like it!"

I am tickled pink...or fuschia, if we want to be more poetic....to report that, four months after its birth, the number of subscribers to Your Daily Poem has septupled (is that a word?), poets published and un are submitting wonderful work on an almost daily basis, and people are passing around featured poems like juicy gossip. It's enough to make a poetry lover giddy.

Why bother, you may ask, or who cares? It comes down to this: life's hard most days--especially these days. Whether you're a young mother struggling to make ends meet, a working stiff trying to hang onto your job, a retiree worried about health and Social Security, or a corporate tycoon just having a bad day, we all need something to lift our spirits, make us laugh, stretch our imagination, take us away, or resurrect a fond memory. Poetry can do all that. But for too many of us, poetry got a bad name because someone made us study something awful in a classroom, or we opened a Revered Poetry Journal and were befuddled, repulsed, or bored by what we found inside, or we went to a reading and were embarrassed, offended, or bored by what we heard.

So this is my plea: give poetry a second chance. If you think you hate it, go to Your Daily Poem and click around in the archives. Read Ellen Bass's account of a mid-life couple smooching at an airport. Read the condemnation of little girl's beauty pageants on July 21st ("the stench of pink:" what a great line!). Read about an Elvis sighting in the peanut butter aisle at Shoprite, or the bliss of a perfectly ripe avocado, or the smell of oregano in a grandmother's kitchen, or the feel of your beloved's curls against your pillow.

Believe me, poetry is alive and well at YDP and it's not boring. It's heartrending, and hilarious, and touching, and titillating and--big bonus!--not even remotely connected to health insurance! Come discover poets from around the world whose work will definitely help you appreciate the world around you--one wonderful word at a time.