Happy Tulip Time! I hope you all have been enjoying the flowers and food and parades. (Let's see, so far I've seen Anna, about four times, and Susan at least twice, whose name I yelled loudly to see what would happen) Where is everyone else?? (Don't give me that "I'm not remotely close to Holland excuse"...) But anyway, I think it officially ended and I should be discussing Poetry Everywhere! (It makes it sound sort of scary, don't you think?) All of the titles that I mention are hyperlinks, so if you want to read them, that's probably the quickest way.
I started by watching the animated ones, and I liked many of the poems. I thought it was a little bit farther away from the poet, but it also helped to form a picture and let you imagine more. One of my favorites was a children's poem called
Some Words Inside of Words by Richard Wilbur. I think the animation was really useful for this poem, because by being able to show the words, you could see what he meant by 'words inside of words'. I also liked the voice of the poet, so even though you don't get to see his expression, he reads it with a lot of expression. I also watched
Hedgehog by Paul Muldoon, and while I wasn't actually that impressed by the animation, I thought that it was still a good poem. First of all, how could you not like a poem about a hedgehog? Second of all, it made hedgehogs sound really mysterious, which was only slightly as strange as that sounds. But what I really liked was the specific words that he used, that helped to make you think about it. I actually watched most of the poems, but most of them I just don't care for all that much. I watched
Shiver & You Have Weather by Matthea Harvey, and I guess it was pretty good, but the way it was written made it seem to end very abruptly.
In the non-animated category, one of the first ones I noticed and liked was called
A Partial History of My Stupidity by Edward Hirsch. I'm not quite sure why I liked it so much, but I did. It was also a little strange because the poet reminded me ever so slightly of a janitor who used to work at our school. I also watched
Turtle by Kay Ryan, and that just made me feel really bad for turtles. It made them seem so doomed to not go anywhere or be able to do anything. Poor turtles. I watched
Why Are Your Poems So Dark? by Linda Pastan, and at first I thought it was a little strange. Then I watched it again because I was sitting in the library and I missed half the words because a class came in to the computer lab and it was set to be pretty quiet. So I listened again, still thinking it was a little unusual. The funny thing is, I kept remembering the poem throughout the next few days, so I guess I did like it. I liked how the title added so much, because without it, it wouldn't make much sense. I also liked how she feigned this stupidity in her poem, and then used what she had said before to answer. The last one that I saw that I liked was called
Brian, Age 7 by Mark Doty. I thought it was sort of a strange thing to write a poem about (you'll have to watch it to see) but at the same time, some of the comparisons made me laugh. It was a little unusual because he was so calm when he read it, yet the words he uses don't seem like they should be so calm. In the end, it all sounds pretty good, so I guess it doesn't really matter.
I think that all of the poets did a really good job of presenting their poems, although
Why Are Your Poems So Dark? probably had the most expression and was presented most in a fashion that I imagined it would be in, but I think
A Partial History of My Stupidity was also presented quite well. I should also mention that I watched
One Boy Told Me, but I think enough people have mentioned that by now. :)
Once again, Happy Tulip Time!! (I hope those who did enjoy their time had a good laugh at tourists)
