Saturday, April 30, 2016

Choose Something Like a Star: Goodbye, National Poetry Month

Merope
By Henryk Kowalewski (http://www.ccd.neostrada.pl/HTM/Merope.htm) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

For one last National Poetry Month post, I chose the poem I used to give my graduating seniors back in my English teaching days. Something to reach for, something to hold onto, an appropriate way to launch into spring and continue through this divisive political season.

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud-
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
Read the rest here.

Or listen to it, with music by Randall Thompson, photos from Hubble. This performance is by the New York Choral Society with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Richard Auldon Clark:



5 comments:

  1. What a beautiful gift you gave them, Jane. Love this. I always gave some kind of 'goodbye' poem to my students at the end of the year.

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    1. Linda B., thank you. I wonder if any of "our kids" kept those poems or developed a love of poetry. :)

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  2. Lovely--"Since dark is what brings out your light." Frost is so thoughtful. I wish I had thought of giving end of year poems when I taught 8th grade...

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    1. Thoughtful and accessible. Thanks for stopping by, Laura!

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