This year I celebrated National Poetry Month in all aspects of my life, not just in my teaching. It was a rewarding immersion into poetry and a growth experience for me in so many ways.

In my personal reading, I found myself reading old favorites and exploring new poets. I did a “study” of Emily Dickinson’s poem,

“He ate and drank the precious Words–

His spirit grew robust–He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was dust–

He danced along the dingy Days

And this Bequest of Wings

Was but a book–What Liberty

A loosened spirit brings.”

As a bookstore owner and a passionate bibliophile, this previously unknown poem brought great pleasure and pensive thought to me as I went on the internet to discover about this poem the critics answers to often asked, minute-detailed questions and interpretations of such obscure lines as, “I taste a liquor never brewed.” from another Dickinson poem, related to the first line of this poem. I spent two hour-long sessions re-reading my much-worn, very marked-up copy of Emily Dickinson’s Poems, selected and introduced by Thomas H. Johnson, which includes much information about “The Belle of Amherst.”

I had planned to re-read my favorite poetry collection, home body by rupi kaur, but time ran out. I did use money earned through professional growth courses to buy three copies for prizes in the Poetry Contest held this month in my Freshman Composition classes (more on this later).

I acquired a new collection of poetry The Hurting Kind by Ada Simon, Poet Laureate of the U.S. which I will read soon, and took down from my TBR shelf and enjoyed, This Poem is a Nest by Irene Latham and art by Johanna Wright.

Overall, I invested my personal time and energies into poetry to the best degree I have since I first started observing National Poetry Month in April.

RAE 5/1/23