Matt recommends reading some poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and I feel like it's my duty as one of the English majors on staff to encourage you to check out some poetry before the month is over. I can almost see you wrinkling your nose, saying that poetry is not your thing. I know that reading it is not most people’s idea of a good time, but it could be! And even if it’s not, is there any harm in trying, one month out of the year?

CMPL has a huge selection of poetry books for your enjoyment. If you’re looking for something contemporary and accessible, look up the work of former US poet laureate Billy Collins, who writes simple, unassuming poems that are nonetheless quite powerful. If you’re interested in a particular subject, check with a librarian to see if we have a book of poems on that subject, or if we could request one from a different library. (In our collection, for example, see The Oxford Book of War Poetry, Marriage Poems, Poems for Easter, and Obliviously On He Sails: the Bush Administration in Rhyme, to name a few different examples.) We have a wide assortment of books by classic poets too, so if you’ve always wanted to read Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost or Langston Hughes, for instance, now’s the time! Our collection of poetry anthologies is excellent and diverse, from An Anthology of Poetry by Women to The Poetry of Black America, and from The Best American Poetry 2009 to Another Kind of Nation : an Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry. If you’re feeling really adventurous, give Postmodern American Poetry a try (or just check out the collected poems of Allen Ginsberg).

If you insist that you just don’t get poetry, then try some instructional books, like How to Read a Poem or A Grain of Poetry: How to Read Contemporary Poems and Make Them a Part of Your Life. (My personal advice: take your time. Read a poem several times, slowly. And then out loud. It really helps!) Or if you’d rather listen than read, I highly recommend Poetry Speaks, one of my favorite items in the collection, a wonderful book that comes with three CDs of poets reading their work out loud.

My point is that there are about as many kinds of poems and poetry books as there are people, and National Poetry Month is the perfect time to see what you like! Talk to a librarian today about finding the right poems to enrich your life.