Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Poetry

April is National Poetry Month and tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day.  To celebrate, Otto will be bringing a copy of Shel Silverstein's poem Where the Sidewalk Ends to each of his school mates, and I am considering some serious poetry bombing on our campus.  Because, why not?  Poetry is awesome.

Check out this amazing woman, poetry bombing by sewing verses into thrift store clothing:





 And here, for you, is one of my favorite poems (although it is very difficult to choose just one):

 Morning Song 
by Sylvia Plath 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. 
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry 
Took its place among the elements. 

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. 
In a drafty museum, your nakedness 
 Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother 
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow 
Effacement at the wind's hand. 

All night your moth-breath 
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: 
 A far sea moves in my ear. 

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral 
In my Victorian nightgown. 
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square 

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try 
Your handful of notes; 
The clear vowels rise like balloons.