A Reminiscence for Only So an Hour

I have countless good memories that involve poetry. Truthfully, I can’t pick just one so I guess my memory is of my childhood and poetries impact. I have a sort of collage of bits and pieces of memories and stories from when I was little moving up through life, so here it goes…

Music it’s own distinct form of poetry: a combination of multiple art forms; rhyme, rhythm, beat, tune, and vocals- all adding up to a masterpiece. Ever since I was very very young I enjoyed listening to music. My mom has told me that it was one of the 3 ways she could get me to fall asleep, the other two being holding me while vacuuming and going for a car ride. I remember listening to the little kid sing-song music in the car and having every word of every song on multiple tapes memorized. I’m still that way, only now I have every word of every song of 2, almost 3, generations of music memorized. I’m not kidding. Maybe it comes in the genes, my aunt is the same way in remembering music and my grandfather was a Shakespearian actor among other acting careers.

Also starting at a young age (3 or so years old) I began memorizing And Writing poetry. When I was about 4 my mom taught me the poem, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat,” a poem she had learned from her father and the poem that I did for Poetry Out Loud this year.

I continued to memorize and write poetry and then one day I discovered a magical thing called poetry books! It was a whole new world. At the time I really got interested in reading poetry I was reading very complex sophisticated poems from an adult poetry book at home then having to settle for Shell Silverstein at school. At the time his whimsically writing was sufficient for me.

One thing I must confess is that I hate reading, always have. So in 3^rd grade, when we would have SSR (silent sustained reading) I would pull out my teachers, Where the Sidewalk Ends. For some reason, still unknown to me, my teacher strongly discouraged this. In fact, he banned me from reading poetry in his classroom, even on free read days. I began staying in during recess to read my rhyme but soon enough (after the second day) my teacher too didn’t allow me to do this. So, at that point, I couldn’t pick up poetry during SSR, I wasn’t allowed to read what I wanted on the free read days while everyone else could, and I was forced to play either a mindless game of tag or hop scotch or Jenga instead of absorbing myself in the world of poetry.

Good thing I was a stubborn little kid and was only driven to read more poetry and subsequently write my teacher an essay on the benefits of poetry on a developing mind. He decided to change his mindJ

I love poetry, its deep and freeing, it’s a way to escape from my world and travel into someone elses. It’s a way to feel pain and excitement, happiness and sorrow. A way experience things that will overpower your thoughts, but only so an hour.