Choose Something Like a Star: Goodbye, National Poetry Month

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

by Robert Frost

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:

The Creation: Earth Day, National Poetry Month

(photo Earth-Western Hemisphere, public domain, NASA)

Happy Earth Day! Happy National Poetry Month! I pondered what to post for today. There are so many wonderful, worthy books to highlight and poems to read. Just troll around Facebook, twitter, and author's blogs.

I decided to go back to the very beginning and share "The Creation" by James Weldon Johnson. I love it for it's strong sense of story, it's poetic language, and it's powerful tenderness.

It begins:

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.

Read the rest here.

Hearing poetry recited well is an experience. Take in "The Creation," recited by Wintley Phipps.



How do you celebrate Earth Day?

Cheers for Dewey Decimal: National Library Week & National Poetry Month

(Photo by Maggie Appleton https://www.flickr.com/photos/appletonmaggie/5907672591, CC by SA 2.0)

I grew up with the Dewey Decimal System, which is still used in many school and public libraries. Certain Dewey Decimal numbers feel like home to me. Here's a poem about my favorite. What's yours?

Dewey Decimal, the Library Guide

Dewey Decimal helps me find

Just the books I have in mind.

Zeros are the books on media,

Computer books, encyclopedias.

Next come one hundreds and twos,

Books on thoughts, beliefs, and views.

Three hundreds cover human groups—

Families, schools, and army troops.

Books on language make up fours,

Fives are animals and more.

Sixes tell of health and cooking—

Not what I want. I’ll keep looking.

Seven hundreds are the arts—

Music, painting, acting parts.

Nine hundreds cover every place

In history of the human race.

Eight hundreds, here I am at last.

Stories told from ages past,

Poems and plays I read with pride.

Dewey Decimal is my guide.
                  --Jane Heitman Healy, c2015

Happy Reading! Happy National Library Week! Happy National Poetry Month!

Celebrate Your Library and Be Transformed! National Library Week, 4/10-4/16, 2016

"Libraries Transform" is 2016's National Library Week theme. Libraries stand for equal access to information for all. They educate. They provide refuge. They are a place to explore. They offer community. 

Many authors have written odes to libraries in poetry and prose, such as:

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.-Ray Bradbury

and

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.–Saul Bellow

and

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.–Norman Cousins

Here's a true story. A man came into his public library, day after day, week after week, using an online practice test resource to improve his academic skills. Finally, he announced to the librarian that he had passed his GED test because of the practice test program provided there at no charge. She congratulated him and was even happier when he came in again to announce that he'd gotten a good full-time job.  

Sometimes, librarians and their patrons transform together! Click here to see Carmen Agra Deedy read her book The Library Dragon.

How have libraries transformed your life?

Lee Bennett Hopkins, National Poetry Month, & National Library Week!

I was nervous to say "hello" to Lee Bennett Hopkins when I met him before a breakout session at an International Reading Association (IRA--now ILA) Conference years ago. He was like a rock star to me. In fact, he IS a rock star of children's poetry, having written and anthologized nearly 200 books of children's poetry! He is a champion of the genre, encouraging beginners and generously supporting awards to children's poets. And of course, he has won numerous awards himself.

But I shouldn't have been nervous, because in spite of his children's poetry rock-stardom, he is also a very kind and gracious person who welcomed me to the room where he was set to introduce children's poet Kristine O'Connell George, an IRA/Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet award winner.

One of Hopkins' recent anthologies, Jumping Off Library Shelves, is a perfect match for National Library Week, April 10-16, 2016. It contains poems by well-known poets Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Nikki Grimes, Michele Krueger, Cynthia Cotten, Jane Yolen, J. Patrick Lewis, X.J. Kennedy, Joan Bransfield Graham, Deborah Ruddell, Alice Schertle, Kristine O'Connell George, Ann Whitford Paul, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, and Lee himself. The poems are about the power of story, the role of libraries as refuge and places to explore. Librarians, books, and the internet are all featured here.

Here is Lee reciting his poem, "Good Books, Good Times"


As Lee says, "Be happy with poetry"! (and I would add "and libraries!")