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Community Corner

Put a Poem in Your Pocket or Your Bookbag

Booth Library celebrates National Poetry Month this April

Does National Poetry Month inspire you to start speaking  in couplets or get in touch with your sensitive side?  

Me neither. 

But I have to admit that each April when National Poetry month is promoted in schools and libraries and websites, I do feel as if I should be exposing myself to more poetry.

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The American Academy of Poets started National Poetry Month in 1996.  According to their website, National Poetry Month has several goals:

  • Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
  • Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
  • Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
  • Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
  • Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
  • Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
  • Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

Every April I make an effort to read poetry to and with my kids, and every April I find that we all enjoy it and wonder why we don't read more of it throughout the year. 

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Children's poetry collections make for ideal reading.  A short poem can be shared any time of day, but are perfect for bedtime reading since one poem or several can be read, depending on how much time we have. 

No matter how worn out I am at the end of the day, slipping into the rhythmic meter of a poem melts my stress away.

I discovered an anthology last year that is still my absolute favorite:  Bill Martin Jr.'s Big Book of Poetry.  

The cover of the book is bright and inviting, and the interior pages mirror that style, making it fun to read and look at.  It is illustrated by Steven Kellogg, Lois Ehlert and others.  The poems inside run from serious to silly and are written by Bill Martin, Jr., Margaret Wise Brown, Langston Hughes,  Jack Prelutsky and more.

The intermediate or middle school child might be interested in former Nutmeg-nominee Pieces of Georgia, by Jen Bryant.  It's a novel written in non-rhyming free verse, from the perspective of 13-year-old Georgia, as she works through a difficult summer after her mother's death. 

She's a sweet, shy, questioning protagonist, trying to figure out who she is and where she fits.  As well as those interested in reading a novel in poem form, this book would interest art-lovers, as Georgia spends the summer exploring American southwest art after an anonymous benefactor tries to encourage her artistic talent by giving her a membership to the local art museum.

Ginger Humeston read Nature's Paintbox by Patricia Thomas aloud during a poetry presentation sponsored by the library earlier this month.  This book is found in the children's department but  the evocative and descriptive language is sure to spark a response in poetry or nature-lovers of any age, and in fact inspired the 15 women who attended to write their own poems that morning.

All of these books are available at C.H. Booth Library.

While you're there, you can find more information on National Poetry Month taped to the glass windows by the children's circulation desk, and in a large display in the Young Adult section, where you are invited to pick a poem out of the jar in honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day so that you can read it aloud on April 29.

When was the last time you checked out the 811 poetry section at the library?

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