By Chris Tucker, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-509630.mp3
Dallas, TX –
April may or may not be the cruelest month, as T. S. Eliot wrote, but it's definitely National Poetry Month.
Now if you didn't know that, don't feel lonely. National Poetry Month almost slipped by me - on little cat feet, I suppose- along with National Pecan Month, International Guitar Month, and National Welding Month, which also happen in April. I like guitars and pecans, but I feel a bit guilty forgetting National Poetry Month because poetry, which once meant a great deal to me, now has very little presence in my life.
I was an English major in college, where I spent happy hours reading Keats, Wordsworth, Yeats, Housman, Dylan Thomas and others. I did my masters thesis on a poet. Later, I taught poetry as a high school and college instructor. I valued and benefited from the emotional depth, the passion and vividness of great poetry. But despite all that, and despite having several volumes of the world's best poems sitting a few feet from my desk, I almost never read poetry anymore. If I may use one of those similes we study in high school, poetry is like a country I once loved to visit, but now I've lost my passport. Or maybe I voluntarily surrendered it.
Which, I suppose, makes me pretty typical. I mean, who talks about poetry these days? Who can name a living, working poet? Since I left the academic world, I can't recall being at any party or gathering where anyone brought up poetry. Not only did I almost forget National Poetry Month, I drew a blank when someone named Claudia Emerson won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I've ever seen her name in print before.
Now it's easy to draw up a list of reasons, or excuses, for turning my back on poetry. It's true that some poetry is obscure and difficult, more like hieroglyphics than entertainment. In addition, poetry is almost invisible outside of the schools. Most newspapers don't review new books of poetry, and poetry rarely lands in the spotlight. One exception came a year after the September 11 attacks when Billy Collins, then U. S. poet laureate, wrote a beautiful, plainspoken poem to commemorate the victims. It's called "The Names" and you can easily find it on the Internet.
Finally, poetry seems too quiet, too fragile for our raucous, explosive, demonstrating, litigating world. It's like sending a flower to stop a bulldozer. As W. H. Auden wrote, "Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its own making where executives would never want to tamper."
Well, those are good excuses, but they're still excuses. What I want to do, between now and the next National Poetry Month, is reintroduce myself to poetry. I hereby resolve to read at least one poem a week over the next year at least 52 poems - not in the spirit of nostalgia but the spirit of discovery. I'd like to see what difference it makes in my life, and I'll report what I find.
Now, having challenged myself, let me challenge the community: What if next year, some local arts organization, or maybe the Dallas Institute for the Humanities and Culture, did something to thrust poetry into the communal consciousness? How about a local version of that "Favorite Poem" project Robert Pinsky started when he was Poet Laureate a few years ago?
They could ask 25 notable Dallasites to choose a favorite poem and explain why they like it. Does Laura Miller have a favorite poem? Don Hill? Roger Staubach? Ross Perot? Who knows? Such an event, perhaps broadcast on our favorite public radio station, might help move poetry from its academic mausoleum back into the everyday world of the living.
Chris Tucker is a contributing editor for American Way magazine.
If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.