SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

April is National Poetry Month. Read some poetry. It's a lost art, it's good for your soul, it's better than chicken noodle soup!

One of my favorites, just to get you started:

E. E. Cummings - Read about him here. (Highlights: he was born in Massachusetts, studied at Harvard, was a volunteer ambulance driver in France during WWI, was imprisoned for suspected espionage, was anti-war, and in his writing he experimented with radical changes in grammar, punctuation, and form.)

When you read his poetry (especially the first time, especially if you're not particularly inclined toward poetry-lovin'), read it aloud. The sound and rhythm of his lines are important. Don't think in terms of dictionary definitions of the words he uses; think in terms of connotation, the feeling and memories evoked by a word. Poets often use a word's connotation, but Cummings mastered the connotative qualities of words to the point that they overpowered the definition. He created a new definition for words by using them according to associations rather than formal meaning.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Read more of his poetry here.