poetry day

At some point soon I will talk about graduation from teacher training, and yoga, and some of the more surprising (to me) revelations contained therein. But in the meantime, a different sort of revelation.

Ten British actors read 10 British poems.

I love that poetry lives and breathes because these actors make it live and breathe, and that people actually care about that. I try and imagine a US network doing this, and I can't. Perhaps one has, and I just don't know about it.

I admit a particular perspective (the writing teacher in a classroom of business, econ, engineering, and biosci majors), of people who do not like poetry in the same way they do not like vegetables, because it is perceived as unpleasant or difficult or whatever. I wish we had some aesthetic, trained from school, that this stuff is beautiful and important. I don't know that I had teachers try and explain that to me until maybe high school (it obviously stuck, because here I am); but they were exceptional teachers, too. Deidre Gilbert and Margo McCoy taught me how to read it, and maybe more importantly, to hear it.

So go listen.

Anyway. Two of my favorite WWI poems are partway down the page. The Eccleston version of "Dulce Est Decorum Est" gave me chills. (But, confession: much as I adore Cumberbatch's voice, I still don't much like John Keats.)