Poem in Your Pocket 2016: How I Discovered Poetry

For Poem in Your Pocket Day 2016, I decided to cart around Marilyn Nelson’s “How I Discovered Poetry.” I had read it before, most recently in the collection Poetry Speaks Who I Am, edited by Elise Paschen, and had even dog-eared it.

“How I Discovered Poetry”

It was like soul-kissing, the way the words 

filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk. 

All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15, 

but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne 

by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen 

the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day 

she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me 

to read to the all except for me white class. 

She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder, 

said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder 

until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing 

darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished 

my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent 

to the buses, awed by the power of words.

When I picked it up again yesterday, it sent me spinning back into the recesses of my disorganized mind to ascertain when I first discovered poetry.

I remembered copying cheesy four-to-eight line poems from the board in Mrs. Latch’s 1^st grade classroom, stapling them into a crude Crayola-illustrated compilation of handwriting paper to give to my mother. I have no idea what they were or where they went—probably a landfill somewhere in Arkansas for all I know.

I remembered that throughout elementary school I thought poems were easy to read, but not much more than that.

I remembered cracking up (out loud) when Ms. Ortiz read “The Cremation of Sam McGee” in 7^th grade, not because of the content, although it was a bit funny despite the darkness of the material, but because I began to relish the language…and I knew what made it such a great poem. Owl-eyed Ms. Ortiz was not amused, as she was trying to establish the setting, front-loading for us reading Call of the Wild.

            I unsuccessfully tried my hand at writing song lyrics—mostly ballads—in 9^th grade but became fascinated by rap lyrics and rhythms, although I never tried writing any of those until 11^th grade.

I think it might have been in 10^th grade, though, in Mr. Albert’s class that maybe I really discovered poetry. He's the one who had us listen to Vincent Price perform Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (on vinyl) with the lights off.

I remember having to explicate a simple poem about a dog. I believe it was simply called “The Dog,” but I am not quite sure. I’ve tried looking for it since then, but my searches have been fruitless. I remembering it having four short, simple quatrains, and the dog was coming toward the speaker, but that’s all I can recall. If anyone out there can help, I’d appreciate it. I don’t think it was a super-impressive piece of literature—maybe even contrived for a clueless high school student to practice with; I’m not sure. But I do know that once I saw the multiple layers that went into the simplicity of the poem—the language, the complexity of the meaning, and how it impacted the people around me, I was hooked. Then again, I had always loved language and words; they were magic from the time I started identifying letters. And when I found out how summary, emotional connections, symbolism, form, figurative language, repetition, theme, and all the other nuances of Meaning blended together on the playground of human experience, of course I wanted to play with poetry, too.

We started writing poetry: acrostics, haiku, cinquain, limericks, and many other vomitus forms that drive me bonkers today—pieces I have sworn I would never compel students to write, although it seems that most of their poetry exposure consists strictly of these and other fill-in-the-cheesy blank poems and Shel Silverstein. But I digress. I found that I was good at writing poetry, especially using this thing called free verse. However, I thought that great poetry had to fit rhyme and meter, and so I dabbled in that, and I ended up forcing rhymes, slanting others worse than bad puns. It wasn’t until I learned to let go that anything amazing happened, though. One of my poems that I wrote for Mr. Albert’s class was published in a British literary magazine (and, no I don’t remember the title of the periodical either). The poem was “Subway,” which I later published in the school newspaper as a junior.

For a time, if you looked at my earlier attempts at poetic drivel, you can interpret my life and its ups and downs, kind of like a teenage journal: rollercoastering mood swings, school misery, confusing relationships of all kinds, and flat, pretentious blather masquerading in philosophical sheep’s clothing. My vocabulary needed a definite smack down, or at least refined pruning. I remember writing a poem in 12^th grade because I learned the word ostentatious. I did another with gregarious. (I still like mixing my metaphors, though; it’s fun.)

Since that semi-angsty time in my life, I am happy to report that I think I have improved. Browse this blog; find the poetry label on the right-hand side bar to get started, and see if I have. Some of my earliest posts reveal some of the dross from the past. So, with this ramble about how I found poetry, enjoy the rest of Poem in Your Pocket Day! I’d love for you to share yours.