I have always loved poetry. I have been trying to figure out when the love started, and I just can’t. I remember the first poem I memorized in second grade. I remember my poetry writing class in college. I don’t remember ever not loving poetry. Mostly, however, I have always tended to relegate poetry to the “when I have time” part of my life. Oh I was lucky, because my career as an English Teacher, specifically in my AP Lit course allowed me to teach poetry and to some extent forced me to stay at least generally aware of new poets of note. I loved building a list of poems for my students to write about, because I could explore new poets and poetry and call it work. I have collected books of poetry over the years as I explored, always telling my students that “when I retire, I’d have more time to read and learn from them.” I have yet to study these books. They still seem, I don’t know, frivolous in the light of other things I think need done, but I don’t really think that. Still, poetry remains intrinsic to me. After I lost my mom in 2015, I turned to poetry for solace. My brother in law sent the following:

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
Emily Dickinson

Emily knew grief, and I find comfort in her words here - both practical and touching…eternity…I needed to process the grief and loss that I felt at the time. This poem captured my feelings well.

Emily is one of my favorite poets. I’m sure it has something to do with reading “Because I could not stop for death” in high school, but my love for her work was cemented when I studied her in college. Teaching her work made me love it more. The deeper I dug, the more I found to admire. Very specifically, I have books about Emily that I have gathered over the years - just waiting for me to find the time to study them. I couldn’t wait (I told my students that, often).

But then again maybe not. I look at the books; I dust them on occasion; I move them around. I have not cracked them open. I need to produce, I think? I have long listened to the impractical nature of my love of the study of literature. I remember being encouraged to major in something useful like computers. While I made a great career as a teacher of English, I have also listened to student after student ask, “How will I use this?” I always had an answer - a good one I’m certain, and yet with more time than I’ve had in a long time, I’m not studying like I’d like. Will I?

My recent reading of Cacophony of Bone: The Circle of a Year by Kerri nĩ Dochartaigh really reminded me of the sacredness and the importance of the written word. Her reliance on the words of the writers she read and admired to move through the changes of 2020 and her own battles and losses within them truly meant something to me. Her own words meant something to me. She quoted so many of my favorites: Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney and more. (Bishop’s “One Art” speaks to a grief of its own. Just beautiful.) I bought Dochartaigh’s book in print to further explore the authors there. Will I?

I’m hoping to soon work on downsizing my books and reorganizing my shelves. Oh I have read article after article and have not started yet :-) But I want to keep poetry. Even if the collections haven’t been touched recently or if I only read them once or if the covers are damaged, and the pages yellowed. I want to keep the poetry that reflects my life. I want to read it again, years later. I want to study the poets and see why and how they wrote. I want to love the music and the words and the language. Maybe I even want to write poetry. Will I?