All poetry considered here

Before I turn to favorite poems, resources about poetry and poets (and those resources will include web resources as well as print), I would like to establish one parameter. Poetry from around the world will be considered here. English, American, South American, African, Asian, ancient and contemporary and everything in between. I hear about the study of dead white guys, and I assume that means wonderful writers like Wordsworth and Shelley, Browning and Tennyson. They will be included here. This blog would not last long without Nikki Giovanni, though, or Frank X. Walker or Marilou Awiakta. Or Maxine Kumin. Or Basho. Or Adrienne Rich. Or whoever wrote the sensuous words of the Song of Solomon. And on, and on.

As the Shakers say, I bid you kindly welcome. Poets long gone and poets still breathing. And you, who are reading my words. Welcome. Enjoy my journey with me for ever long it lasts.

Enjoying Poetry

I rejoice in the splendor of poetry, and believe everyone else should too. Read a poem aloud, savor the words like a fine wine, stand on top of a mountain and shout out verse and hear its fine echo, whisper words to the water of a lake or a stream, share poetry with your loved one or with strangers. Read a poem or two poems or three poems every day. Laugh at doggerel, deign to wallow in sentimental rhymes, be stirred to the depths of your very being by the epics of Homer, the sonnets of Shakespeare.

I have read poetry all my life. My parents read poetry, and bequeathed to me that love -- as well as the books of poetry they had collected. I am grateful to them for sharing this gift with me. Now I would like to share that gift with you. So I am going to blog about the poetry I have discovered in my life in the hopes that you -- whoever finds this blog -- will enjoy the poems I admire and have memorized, and or would like to memorize some day, for I believe that knowing a poem "by heart" makes that poem as much a part of you as the cells that make up your own heart. And, since I am a librarian, I am going to include comments about good resources about poetry that I have discovered that makes the experience of reading poetry even more of a delight.

I welcome you know on my journey. Now all I need to decide is -- where to start. And that should be a topic of my next post.