Poetry Thursday #4
Our prompt this week is "Why I love poetry." In 153 words or less. I don't have a "poetry base;" no courses, no publications. But I love it when poetry nails it. Sometimes it's only a line or a phrase, but there's a connection. An ah-ha moment. Yesterday I read a poem about an Irish WWI airman who died in Italy (Yeats). It's today's news almost 90 years ago.This week I was reading "The Best American Poetry, 2006," guest editor, Billy Collins. On pp. 30-33, there is a poem by Amy Gerstler, "For my niece Sidney, age six." She begins with Margaret Davy in 1542 being boiled to death for poisoning her employer, an item she came across reading the 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica. She uses it to launch a poem about what simmers in the crock-pot of her head, and moves on to speculate that her untamable, curious niece may someday like Martin Luther nail theses to a door (about which she also read that day in the encyclopedia).
I used to own 7 sets of encyclopedias. My favorite which I still enjoy browsing with a cup of coffee belonged to my grandfather--the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1910 (I also own the 12th and 13th). It's printed on tissue thin paper and bound in black leather which is crumbling a bit on the spines.
In this poem, Gerstler writes about owning 5 sets of encyclopedias. . .
"That's the way I like to start my day;
drinking hot black coffee and reading
the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica.
Its pages are tissue thin and the covers
rub off on your hands in dirt colored
crumbs (the kind a rubber eraser
makes) but the prose voice is all knowing
and incurably sure of itself. . . "
Connect!
Poetry Thursday
Poetry
Amy Gerstler
American poetrySource URL: https://maryelizabeth-winstead.blogspot.com/2007/01/poetry-thursday-4-our-prompt-this-week.html
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