Poetry Tuesday- April is Poetry Month

April is poetry month. I have always loved poetry. I like rhyming poems better than free verse, but I love reading powerful words and poetry always packs a punch of meaning!!

One of my favorite memories with my sister is when we went together to hear Caroline Kennedy speak in San Antonio on April 28, 2011. She had just published her anthology, She Walks In Beauty, A Woman’s Journey Through Poems.

She told a story about her mother that I loved. She said when she was a little girl, she and her little brother, JFK Jr. didn’t buy their mother presents for her birthday or Christmas. All her mother wanted was for them to give her a poem that they had picked for her. I love the idea of having children learn the importance of poetry by having them give it as a gift. I also love that they will have a mental library of great poems they have memorized! I plan on using that strategy with my future grandchildren. There will be no gifts for this granny– All I will want is a poem recited just for me!!!

April is a month that really makes me miss my job as a middle school librarian. I had a great English department to work with, and we had nurtured a very special day at our school. Every April we celebrated a great day of poetry with “Poem In Your Pocket Day.” It was an idea we took from New York City and made it our own special day of poetry reading, sidewalk chalk poems, poetry slams during lunch– a love of all things poetry. I miss that special day!!!

In honor of Poetry Month, I will devote every Tuesday to one of my favorite poems!! Be sure to check back each Tuesday because I probably won’t publicize them all!!

So here is today’s poem: I hope you enjoy it as much as I always have.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

This poem makes me think of my grandmother who grew daffodils in her yard. There are numerous 

daffodils blooming all over my little hometown right now- I love it!!

My kids with my Grandmother’s daffodils in OKC- 1997.