Poetry

Let me first say, I am not a big fan of poetry or "poe" as my friend Mark often refers to it.  As a favor for Mark, and also to make some extra cash, occasionally, I would go to a University on a weekend and judge a "forensics tournament."  This was not a bunch of criminal investigators lined up at microscopes solving crimes, it was public speaking.  One of the categories was Poetry or "Poe" as I'm used to calling it now.  One of my least favorite things to judge was Poe because hearing it aloud, I don't really "Get" it.  I was always just winging it when I chose a winner of that event.

Anyway, for my Intro to Education class, one of the assigned books for the semester is this (so far) great book called "Letters to a New Teacher."  It is comprised literally of letters a very experienced teacher wrote in response to questions posed by a brand new teacher, and it is a really good read if you want a glimpse into the mind of a great teacher.  He includes a lot of poetry excerpts in this book, and so far, into the 3rd or 4th chapter, I'm really enjoying the excerpts he's included.

Here's one by Marge Piercy:
"Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real notes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure. Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
   interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes."

Love this.  That is all.