Ring around the Rosie, a Pocket Full of… Poems!
On April 18th,
we’re celebrating Poem in Your Pocket
Day. This is a day to, well, put a
poem in your pocket.
And don’t
tell me you can’t find a poem that suits your pocket. There are poems about everything (though, as
G.K. Chesterton pointed out, “The poets have
been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese”).
Here, for
example, is a poem about a pocket:
Pockets
Are generally over or
around
Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
In the direction of those
Dark places, and indeed
It is their nature to be dark
Themselves, keeping a kind
Of thieves' kitchen for the things
Sequestered from the world
For long or little while,
The keys, the handkerchiefs,
The sad and vagrant little coins
That are really only passing through.
For all they locate close to lust,
No pocket ever sees another;
There is in fact a certain sadness
To pockets, going in their lonesome ways
And snuffling up their sifting storms
Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.
A pocket with a hole in it
Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?
What is a pocket but a hole?
-Howard
Nemerov
After you
select the perfect poem to carry in your pocket, share it with everyone you
meet!That’s the joy of poetry! Ask someone if they have a poem in their
pocket; Read someone the poem you have in your own.
As an added
incentive to do these things, there will be staff and faculty equipped with raffle tickets wearing buttons which as, "Is that a poem in your pocket?" that they will give you
if you read your poem to them. You will find staff or faculty wearing buttons in most of the campus buildings. You can also visit the Library and read your poem to one of the staff there for tickets. Collect as
many tickets as you wish, and bring them to the Open
Mic Poetry Night in the Library at 6:00 pm.
You can read your pocket poem and other poems, listen to staff and
faculty read some of their favorites, eat some yummy treats, and put your
tickets in a drawing for what are rumored to be “amazing prizes.”
Comments