Yesterday I found myself in the position of requesting permission from a poet. Specifically, I was asking to weave two lovely lines of “On Listening to the Two-Headed Lady Blow Her Horn” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (from “The Gospel of Barbecue”) into my next novel. You could say my request was based on surrender; in 11 words Jeffers was able to convey something I — given hundreds of pages to work with — could not.
Most of my childhood poetic knowledge was drawn from Dr. Seuss, a 1936 edition of “The Best Loved Poems of the American People” (I favored the “Humor and Whimsey” section), and my father’s recitations of Robert Frost. I recall studying haiku in fourth grade, writing a free verse ode to football in seventh grade, and of course, nobody makes it out of high school without learning a limerick or two, none reprintable here.
Somewhere during this time I began giving my grandmother a sheaf of my original illustrated poems for Christmas each year. Until her death, I was reminded of this every time I walked in her front door, where — despite all the forced rhymes and callow yearning — they hung framed and immortalized on the wall, because that’s what grandmas do.
Michael Perry: You don’t have to get poetry just taste (via Wisconsin State Journal)
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