Welcome to the Poetry Forum

14 Welcome to the Poetry Forum by A. V. Christie - is Writer-in-Residence at Penn State Abington. She majored in English at Vassar and has a MFA from the University of Maryland. Her [lIst book of poems Nine Skies appeared in The National Poetry Series in 1996. She has also been for ten years a Poet-in-the-Schools working mostly in city schools. Her poems, essays and reviews have been published in Ploughshares, Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Verse, and The American Scholar, among other magazines. Sh~ has one husband, one 5-year-old daughter, two cats-and meets regularly at the Paoli Starbucks to discuss poetry with Dick Gibboney. Dick Gibboney - Poetry has always been with me. I am now struggling with writing it. Not capital-P poetry as if I were an English teacher or something like that. I realized this when A. V. (she is my teacher) and I were first thinking about this piece: I quickly found about 20 poetry books (in my uniquely organized library where one finds books with a new kind of finger-eye radar) some with faded comments on poems I had forgotten. Poetry is like that: It filters through your eyes and emotions like snow infiltrating an old barn. Some of the snow never blows away. That white stuff is poetry. This is why poetry must be approached with caution. It becomes a way of seeing Everything . This has great survival value for the soul and the Real, but as students of Darwin know, it can be maladaptive when talking with deans, Bush Republicans and Gore Democrats, and in meetings about scientific education research , grants, and tenure review. Many thanks to Billy Collins for generous pennission to reprint three poems from his most recent book Sailing Alone Around the Room, New York: Random House, Inc., 2001. Education and Culture Spring 2002 Vol. XVIII No.1 POETRY FORUM 15 Reaching into my shopping bag I pulled out three poetry books (I'm a poetry bag lady). I waved them in front of Ricardo. His old dog looked up as if the eight-foot1930 -airplane propeller was about to fall off the wall. "Here," I said almost fiendishly, "here's one you'll like by Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room. The title makes me laugh." True. The whimsical quality of the title invited me to read this poet guy. And I found my current favorite. (Some of Collins's poems are coming up. Don't miss his "The History Teacher.") Ricardo pushed his chair back; his eyes widened as if the chair had a string tied to his eyelids and the backward movement of the chair opened his eyes like a child playing with a doll. Encouraged, I whipped out The Soul of Rumi. Rumi was a thirteenth-century Persian mystic who wrote in couplets about love and fury, sadness and joy, longing for the beloved and sexual adventures and loss; Nature and emotions. Rumi's book is two inches thick and plastered with multicolored posterns. My book looks like a garden with paper flowers-rooting in words-popping out all over. How's this for elegance and beauty? Rumi writes: I want to be where your bare foot walks because maybe before you step you'1l109k at the ground. I want that blessing. Try this next Valentine's day. "That beats the hell out of Hallmark," Ricardo said, "but most people have the idea that poetry is difficult or something. That you have to be smart or educated for it." Ricardo (who owns the airport where I hang out) spoke for 249,000,000 Americans when he said that. In two years we have never talked about poetry. He admitted that he has thought about writing-up some of his experiences in running the airport. This deep human desire to talk and be heard, to listen and enjoy, drives poetry. It's as human to like poetry as it is to like music or conversation or myths or rhythm. Our fast commercial Enron culture vaporizes our human desire toexpress, to understand, to appreciate. With a vice president, as one example, who voted against Head Start as a congressman, our...