Happy National Poetry Month.

I've mentioned before how I like poetry...how it is important to me. In high school, I was required in classes to memorize poetry (both in French and in English). And before that - I think it was in fifth grade - my Language Arts teacher had us all make what was basically like a simple chapbook, where we copied out poems we liked (and included some poems we had written), and illustrated it.

I think the fact that I remember that project more than 25 years later is evidence of how much I enjoyed it. I just wish I still had that book.

here's an official site for National Poetry Month.

And here are links to a few of my favorite poems:

Those Winter Sundays
Not waving but drowning
Ode to my socks
My favorite Shakespeare sonnet (number 130)
Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 (This one is challenging to find online...most all links are for the John Denver song-version which, I think, cuts out a lot of the beauty of the poem)
For the Time Being
The More Loving One
An Irish Airman Forsees his Death
The Second Coming (that one I find very dark but I've been known to murmur the first few lines to myself whenever a particularly apocalyptic-seeming news story comes on)