This is poem #23 in a series of poems about poems.
One of the great gifts of reading poetry is that it can show us how unalone we are. Most all of human experience has been experienced before, by other humans. And many of these humans write about their sadness. When I am sad, reading such poems helps me feel that someone is holding my hand in a dark night, that I will, indeed, find my way out.
Jane Kenyon's poem "In the Nursing Home", spoke to me when my own grandmother was in a nursing home, when I felt her life had become so different than the life she had led in her younger days. When I lost a friend recently, I turned to Marie Howe's "My Dead Friends". We give poems to new babies, read them at weddings, share them at funerals. Poetry is the genre of human emotion, a strong shoulder we can lean against in the wild winds of life.
Teachers - the poetry we offer up to our students must span the range of human experience. It is not enough to offer silly and fun poems. It's important, but it is not enough. Children experience joy, sadness, humor, anger...and the books we choose should be a mirror for every one of these emotions. As readers, we hope to find ourselves in books, we hope to find that hand in the dark.
Students - when you are trying to deal with something difficult, poetry can help. Just spilling words (like tears) on to paper can help us feel relief and can sometimes even help us understand situations more clearly. We don't have to share such writing with other people; sometimes it's just for us.
This anthology, edited by Georgia Heard in the wake of 9/11, is a collection of poems to comfort readers through any loss. Illustrated by various artists, each poem reaches out to touch us during our own difficult times.
Today is Poetry Friday! For the complete Poetry Friday roundup and a couple of cool dog poems, visit Teaching Authors, and you will learn about all kinds of interesting poetry posts in the kidlitosphere today. Again, I welcome all of the new visitors from KidLitCon! Please keep on coming back, y'hear?
This THIS I BELIEVE commentary, "The Making of Poems", by Gregory Orr, speaks to the power of poetry to heal us. He writes, "Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world."
Mid-afternoon this Poetry Friday, I realized how many of us have been healed by poems. If you have a poem title which has helped you through a dark time, would you please share it in the comments?
To learn more about Poetry Friday from the Poetry Friday panel PowerPoint (how's THAT for a tongue twister?) see here.
This THIS I BELIEVE commentary, "The Making of Poems", by Gregory Orr, speaks to the power of poetry to heal us. He writes, "Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world."
Mid-afternoon this Poetry Friday, I realized how many of us have been healed by poems. If you have a poem title which has helped you through a dark time, would you please share it in the comments?
To learn more about Poetry Friday from the Poetry Friday panel PowerPoint (how's THAT for a tongue twister?) see here.
(Please click on COMMENTS below to share a thought.)
