Poetry Month
April is Poetry Month, and I couldn’t let the month come to a close without commenting on the role poetry has played in my life and mentioning two of my favorite poets. Like many of you, there are few days when I don’t read poetry. Subscribing to The Poetry Foundation’s “Poem of the Day” has enhanced the ritual and continues to broaden my poetry horizon.
When I was in 8th grade I was, to put it delicately, a big girl. Finding my niche among the popular junior high girls was next to impossible. I had always loved memorizing poems, reciting Emily Dickinson in my head as I sat at my desk (“There is no Frigate like a Book…”) or some other poet from the blue MacMillan English books which seemed to follow us from grade 5 to grade 8. But in 8th grade, my English teacher, Debbie Walford, bestowed on me the greatest honor of my young life, and created a turning point I wish I’d thanked her for while I had the chance. “You’re a poet,” she wrote on the margin of one of my poems about saving the earth, along with other encouraging comments. I’d found my niche.
I continued to write poetry during every decade of my life after that. But the frequency slowed dramatically. Enter “the retirement years.” It’s time. Time to start writing poems again— bad poems, amateur poems, poems to keep private, and maybe some to eventually share on the blog.
So in honor of Poetry Month, the poems I love, and my desire to write poems again, I am sharing the poetry of two of my favorite poets. Both Ruth Stone and May Sarton have become my favorites as the years have accumulated to The Precious Days of the seventh decade of my life. These two women write poetry about our life journey as women and the roles we take on–some of our own choosing, some foisted upon us. They both have so much to say about the female experience, the female mind, and the ordinary and extraordinary experiences women live, endure, and continue to create to shape a life.
Now I Become Myself
by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All by myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
What role does (has) poetry played in your life? Who are the poets you love? Have they inspired you to write poetry? Drop me a comment, I’d love to know your thoughts.
If you are interested in learning more about these two poets, I suggest:
