Do you have a poem in your pocket?

By Susan Braunstein, Programming Library Associate

One of the more unique ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in April is to select a poem you love and carry it with you to share with co-workers, family and friends on April 30. That date is declared, “A Poem in Your Pocket Day,” by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. They mention on their site that poems have been stored in pockets in a variety of ways throughout history, from the books of the Renaissance to the pocket-sized publications for Army soldiers in World War II.

There are even pocket sized books in the Rapid City Public Library collection including two of my favorite poets, Kahlil Gibran and Pablo Neruda. Neruda’s book is “Love Poems,” and “The Garden of the Prophet” is by Gibran.
One of the most beautiful passages in the Gibran book is included in a response to the request for Gibran to tell his followers what is moving in his heart. He answered in a voice that is described as a star singing, “in your waking dream, when you are hushed and listening to your deeper self, your thoughts, like snowflakes, fall and flutter and garment all the sounds of your spaces with white silence.”

“And what are waking dreams but clouds that bud and blossom on the sky-tree of your heart? And what are your thoughts but the petals which the winds of the heart scatter upon the hills and its fields?”

Gibran is just one of thousands of poets that can be read and shared during National Poetry Month which is set aside every April to encourage everyone to read and learn about poetry. The library can provide a new avenue to explore poetry through the LitFinder database. This is a resource that features full-text literary works, including poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays and speeches. There are more than 126,500 full-text poems plus an option of 850,000 more poem citations.

To further explore poetry, users will find more than 25 discussions that cover most 20th century poetic schools and movements, including Asian-American, Harlem Renaissance, Beat Movement, and Imagism with additional coverage of Native American, British, Colonial and Civil War poetry.

You will also find 3,500 poems and stories published in the current year – an anthology of the best new work from established and emerging authors.

You can find this through the library’s website, www.rapidcitylibrary.org under resources on the home page.

One of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver so I searched this database for her work. I found 417 references to her work in primary sources and literary works and 10 full-text poems. This database provides biographical information, citations for her work that appears in certain books or publications, and first lines of poems that are not full-text.

In the library we have over a dozen of Mary Oliver’s books and the book, “Owls and Other Fantasies – Poems and Essays,” contains one my favorites:
“Wild Geese”
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Our exposure to poetry usually starts as a small child when nursery rhymes are read to us, followed by the classroom environment where the classic poets are shared with students, and later on in life, popular contemporary poets may enter our literary experience.

Outside the classical world of poetry teenagers can find some edgier work in the Young Adult area of the library including, “talking in the dark,” by Billy Merrell or, “The Rose that grew from concrete,” by Tupac Shakur.

One of my favorite young actresses Amber Tamblyn has a stirring book of poems called, “free stallion.” She was the star of the television show, “Joan of Arcadia,” one of those poignant well-written shows that don’t stay on television long. She also starred in the movies, “The Ring,” and, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”

Poetry appreciation is a personal journey. Explore the possibilities on-line or in person at the library and you may discover that someone’s writing will touch your heart and soul in a memorable way.