Poetry - Worth a Look!

By Marina Salenikas, Head of Youth Services, Stevens Memorial, North Andover

One of my favorite pins that I love to wear during the month of April is a smiling, toothy, dinosaur urging everyone to "Devour a Poem". After all, the month of April is National Poetry Month and there's never been a better time than now to savor this literary form, especially for young people.

The whole landscape of children's poetry was forever embellished when the likes of Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Douglas Florian and others started publishing their collections. Suddenly poetry could be funny, silly, topical; in other words accessible to young people. That's not to say that the classics are to be forgotten. With the appropriate illustrator perennial favorites such as, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (Susan Jeffers, illustrator) by Robert Frost or Side by Side collected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Hilary Knight , can continue to introduce children to the magic of language"(Lee Bennett Hopkins).

Not many of us young or old can resist the lure of a Haiku, a form of traditional Japanese poetry very easy to define: it's a 17 syllable verse form consisting of three metrical units of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. If Not For the Cat is in my opinion perfection, both for its literary content and for the lush paintings by Ted Rand. There are seventeen (of course!) haiku composed by Jack Prelutsky about seventeen inhabitants of the animal kingdom and their environments. i.e. "If not for the cat/And the scarcity of cheese/I could be content". (The mouse's plight, of course!).

In 1985 the post of Poet Laureate was established in the United States of America and charged with being the country's official literary advocate and "to strive to raise the nation's appreciation of the reading and writing of Poetry". This individual is appointed by the Librarian of Congress for one year. Some familiar names of past Poet Laureates are: Robert Pinsky (1997-2000), Billy Collins (2001-2003), Rita Dove (1993-1995), Richard Wilbur (1987-1988), and Ted Kooser (2004-). Recently many states have named their own Poet Laureates and happily towns have followed suit. (In North Andover Mr. Michael Souza was recently appointed the first Poet Laureate)

It's never too late to fall in love with Poetry. The rewards are many. Why not decide to read a poem everyday. Make it a family read-aloud. I promise you won't be sorry!