Apparently I need a challenge to make sure I post regularly. So, I am giving myself one, again. April is National Poetry Month and I will be posting a poem a day. Most of them will be children's poems, but some will not.
Though I was an English major, poetry is not my thing. I was one of those who had any love of poetry that was in me thoroughly crushed in high school, then college, English classes. But, to be honest, there wasn't much poetry love there to start with, so the crushing process was fairly simple. I am a realist ( I resist the pessimist label) -- give me a good ole American Realism novel by Twain or Dreiser any day over an obscure line of verse. The darker the better.
I have rediscovered poetry since I began teaching, children's poetry anyway. I have even been meeting with some students this year in a Haiku club and have planned events at school to celebrate National Poetry Month. So I will be posting some of my favorite poems over the next 30 days, and some that I will discover as I am sure I will run out of poems by the middle of the month. And I will try to make sure I am not just going through our collection of Shel Silverstein poems -- variety is the spice of life after all.
This idea came to me after I read to Isaac from Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, which contains my overall favorite poem from my childhood. (You will have to check back each day to find out which one it is.) The last poem I read was "Merry . . ." (pg 164).
No one's hangin' stockin's up,
No one's bakin' pie,
No one's lookin' up to see
A new star in the sky.
No one's talkin' brotherhood,
No one's givin' gifts,
And no one loves a Christmas tree
On March the twenty-fifth.
The night I read that to Isaac was March 25th. Hmmmmmm. If I weren't such a realist/pessimist, I might have taken that to be some kind of sign. Instead, I just decided to challenge myself to post a poem a day. So, let's get started . . . . and feel free to share some of your favorite poems as the month progresses.
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