#wait is lori doing a mesmerizer reference

[whyamiwater]

Lori and Atlas drawing again!!

[mercerislandbooks]

On Poetry

National Poetry Month rolls around every April, and every April I think to myself, “I should read more poetry.” Books are lined up on my bookshelf, some on recommendations from others, bought so that maybe this year I will start to read poetry regularly. My battered Norton Anthology of Poetry sits stuffed with post-its and college notations. A used copy of Poetic Meter and Form. A complete Emily Dickinson. Works of T.S. Eliot. Rilke’s Book of Hours. Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground, a gift from a friend. Wendell Berry, David Whyte, W.S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, all just waiting to be opened and read.

My relationship with poetry has been a winding one. I’m sure as a child my ear for rhythm was awakened through many fine children’s books that use a rhyming structure for their story. But I believe it was L. M. Montgomery, in her Anne and Emily books, that introduced the concept of poetry as a created thing. Who can forget Anne’s obsession with Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, that led her into the leaky dory and stranded her under the bridge, where Gilbert had to rescue her? Montgomery’s lesser known Emily trilogy (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest) features a main character more autobiographical of Montgomery herself. Emily Starr is a deeply sensitive and creative girl who struggles to develop as a writer and stay true to that pursuit. Following Emily’s journey I saw her use poetry to express her emotions and her imagination, finding the right words to convey the beauty seen around her. 

Entering the years of my education, I look back and remember how in high school the poets of World War I captured my imagination. Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon. All these doomed young men writing desperately in the trenches, trying to come to terms with their mortality and the futility of the war they were fighting. College, and a degree in English, meant hours reading and attempting to untangle the obscurities of Metaphysical poets with their complicated religious references, Shakespearean sonnets, Keats and Wordsworth, John Donne, George Herbert. (A lot of men, I’m realizing). At the time all this studying was towards the writing of the almighty essay. What was the author trying to say? What did it all mean? I did my best, the underlining and circling and strange little notes to myself testify I worked very hard to get at the point of it all. There are passages and lines I still know by heart all these years later. 

Yet now I wonder how much I actually understood. I could look up poetic structure and talk about what it meant, and I could use biblical references and scan the meter of the lines. But I feel like something was lost when I tried to take apart a thing that was meant to work together. Looking at all the pieces of a clock laid out in parts doesn’t make it run. Now what I can appreciate is how it sounds, the words strung together, the music that it makes.

The most meaningful poetic experiences that I’ve had in my life have been ones where I have heard poetry read aloud. In college I wandered into a reading by Eavan Boland and was mesmerized by her voice, her words. I kept “That the Science Of Cartography is Limited” tacked up on my bulletin board for years, a touchpoint for the memory. I’ve been to hear Billy Collins read for SAL, his work so full of humor and poignancy. And one of the first events I came to at Island Books, when I was just starting to work here, was a poetry reading by Carol White Kelly. I didn’t know her history with the store or with poetry, I just wanted to come and hear her read. The store was packed to the walls, and again I had that sense of the words coming to life as she read, infusing them with reality and weight. 

These days I am slowly reading through Mary Oliver’s last collection, Devotions, with my mom. We each take one and read it aloud (I’m usually given the longer one), allowing the other a chance to listen, to take in the words, letting them take shape in the mind. Now I find a poem is something that resonates, a response that can’t be forced, only felt. 

There is a way in which a poet, such as Mary Oliver, manages to capture a thought or emotion that perfectly expresses what you yourself have experienced and so you have the sense that you are understood. That you are not alone.  When I think, “I should read more poetry,” it is because of those moments, wanting more of them, realizing it brings a widening to my view, my mental landscape. And there are so many more poets to discover. As I shelve in the poetry section at Island Books and ring up our customers I see ones that intrigue me, Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, the current Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and so many others. I want to keep making space in my reading life for the poets.

Giving us all a chance to hear poetry live, our own local poet, Heidi Seaborn, will be reading from her latest collection, Give a Girl Chaos (and see what she can do) on Thursday, April 11th. Come join us at 5pm at Barrels Wine Bar on Mercer Island for a glass of wine and a spring evening of poetry. 

Here’s hoping April finds you reading a poem or two!

-Lori