Let the 2009 Poemapalooza begin!

Every year, we here at the World Headquarters of the Verb celebrate National Poetry Month with an extravagant Poemapalooza. Inviting poets from all over the world, we dig into metaphor and some happy iambic pentameter with a vengeance. We put poems in our pockets and give them out randomly to people we meet on the street. We write Haiku for breakfast. It's like Woodstock. In the rain and mud of words, who knows what might happen!

Poets are remarkable seers. They dare to disturb the universe. Let's see the world with them this month. I'd suggest you read each day's poem aloud. To yourself. To someone else. To your child's little league soccer team or your astonished management team.

Don't be silly. We could start with no one but Billy. Writing about poetry. Because sometimes the verb to use with poetry is simply to be. Sometimes meaning simply is. (This is as true of business as it is of poetry, by the way).

Introduction to Poetry

-Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.