{"id":5609,"date":"2013-04-01T22:29:33","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=5609"},"modified":"2013-04-01T22:29:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:29:33","slug":"national-poetry-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/04\/national-poetry-month.html","title":{"rendered":"National Poetry Month!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On my Facebook page, I’m publishing my own poems daily — one by one, each written or revised or at least revisited for this month I love.<\/p>\n

But here, I’m going to link daily to a poem important to me. Or maybe just one of the many I adore. Each day I’ll give you a poem to think about. I may post something with it, but mostly I want you to have poetry. Because every beginner’s heart needs it. Like water. Like air. Like love.<\/p>\n

Here’s Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate, to kick us off:<\/p>\n

Introduction to Poetry<\/p>\n

\n
I ask them to take a poem<\/div>\n
and hold it up to the light<\/div>\n
like a color slide<\/div>\n
or press an ear against its hive.<\/div>\n
I say drop a mouse into a poem<\/div>\n
and watch him probe his way out,<\/div>\n
or walk inside the poem\u2019s room<\/div>\n
and feel the walls for a light switch.<\/div>\n
I want them to waterski<\/div>\n
across the surface of a poem<\/div>\n
waving at the author\u2019s name on the shore.<\/div>\n
But all they want to do<\/div>\n
is tie the poem to a chair with rope<\/div>\n
and torture a confession out of it.<\/div>\n
They begin beating it with a hose<\/div>\n
to find out what it really means.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my Facebook page, I’m publishing my own poems daily — one by one, each written or revised or at least revisited for this month I love. But here, I’m going to link daily to a poem important to me. Or maybe just one of the many I adore. Each day I’ll give you a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[11,1181,1187,262,318,1190],"class_list":["post-5609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nNational Poetry Month! - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On my Facebook page, I'm publishing my own poems daily -- one by one, each written or revised or at least revisited for this month I love. 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Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. 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