My poetry education was terrible. I would like to generalize and say that poetry education in all American middle class schools in the 60's and 70's was terrible but . . . I don't know. The culture that I absorbed at that time instilled in me that poetry was something that rhymed. Children's nursery rhymes come to mind. And later maybe I realized music lyrics were poetry. As I got into high school then poetry became writing that was "difficult" and often written in archaic language.
I remember 9th grade English class. We had an assignment to memorize a short poem and a long poem to recite in class a few weeks later. Being an over achiever, I chose the longest short poem and the longest long poem (The Raven). I remember memorizing them line by line as I walked to and from the bus stop. On the day we were to recite our assignments the class was pounded into submission by the repetition of other students who recited the same two shortest poems. My selections were a welcome relief and the teacher was beaming when I recited each poem flawlessly (in my mind). 9th grade. That was the end of my poetry education.
No one ever told me what poetry was supposed to do.
Somewhere, along the way, some of it stuck with me for reasons I couldn't have articulated. Standing in line buying books for my first semester in college I saw a complete works of Robert Frost. A paperback. I bought it and during the following years I would dip into it randomly. That edition wore out with use and now I have a hardcover edition.
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