Treat a poem like dirt

In preparation for Poem in Your Pocket Day — my favorite unofficial holiday — I've been collecting favorite poems, new poems, teachable, sharable, delicious and daring poems.

Poem in Your Pocket Day is simple and fun: During National Poetry Month (happening right now!), select a poem you love, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on Thursday, April 30, 2009.

I found this one yesterday, and it seems the perfect start.

How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual

Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
and don't even notice,
close this manual.

Congratulations.
You can now read poetry.

Thick black pen

I need a bigger marker.

I wasn’t fully prepared for International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month (initiated and declared by leading word-scratcher Austin Kleon) but I’m diving in still. As part of National Poetry Month, Kleon is urging us to get our hands dirty and our pens busy.

In my first celebratory attempt, I got a bit zealous in my scratching. My lopped off letters and scattered words require some translation:

Shape the place

You are tethered
get away
laugh
shape the place
where crying arrived

Upset the dream
Days away, check the door
read, share, relate
know what it means
to have hope

A month of riches

As if it's not enough for daffodils to rise, leggy and proud, and sun to shine, full but coy. Now, April brings two more reasons for glee: National Poetry Month and International Newspaper Blackout Poetry Month.

The official Poetry Month poster, at left, lifts a line from T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

. . . And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse . . .

It's an embarrassment of riches, really, to pack International Newspaper Blackout Poetry into this very same, shortish month. But word-artist Austin Kleon perseveres. He's finding poetry in every column inch, producing a poem each day, and inviting us to join in the fun. His kick-off poem, at right, deftly captures the spirit of the form (for a larger look, click on image).

Off the page

Clear the calendar. Save the date.
The 3rd annual Off the Page event nears!

Enjoy an evening celebration of free expression, free music, and free admission as eight Oregon writers -- and a singer/musician -- share their works of poetry, fiction, memoir, and more.

On Saturday, April 25 at 7pm

At the Green Salmon Coffeehouse, situated in the center of the oceanfront village of Yachats, Oregon.

Featuring writers Khlo Brateng, Sheila Evans, Flip Garrison, Kake Huck, Kate Maloy, Drew Myron, Rick Schultze, Mark Thalman and musician Richard Sharpless.

Doors open and music starts at 6:30pm. Reading at 7pm.

All ages, attitude & experience welcome.

More tanka, please

Good news. The tanka poems keep coming!

This poem was penned by Auburn McCanta, an Arizona writer and reluctant, though award-winning, poet.

Soon this summer

A humming desert
Lifts its skirt of sand to kneel
Its prayers scorch the eye
Rabbits run from grazing hawks
Scorpions waltz in the moon

Morning comes early
Midday wears its beggar’s coat
A dirt rag of sky
Summer’s so close I can feel
It’s breath going up my shirt

My skin is a heat
Air thermals rise in the throat
Orange blossoms dangle
Hope, yet midnight I’m shaking
Scorpions out from my shoe

- Auburn McCanta