Poetry and Song By Linda Stowe
How One Thing Led to Another
Last month I read about Poetry 180, a project developed by former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. The point of the 2002 project was to make poetry an active part of the daily life of high school students by encouraging them to read a poem every day of the 180-day school year. To implement the project, Collins curated a book containing 180 poems that would be meaningful and accessible to this audience. I love just about anything that Billy Collins says, writes, and does, so I thought I’d have my own Poetry 180 experience. I ordered the book from the library, and it arrived on Tuesday.
I decided that I would read the poems as prescribed, one a day. I would do it first thing in the morning and I would read the poem aloud twice. I learned in college that reading things aloud helps with understanding, so this is something I’ve done to good effect for years.
I am on day four of the project and it is going very well in terms of enjoying the poetry. Each one has been thought provoking and memorable. I am happy that I heard about this project and have been able to incorporate it into my daily routine.
An unintended consequence of reading the poetry aloud is that I notice how raspy my voice is getting, probably because I don’t use it very often. Bard suggested a few ways I could use my voice daily (talk to myself, read aloud), but I decided to sing. I am a horrible, horrible singer but since I’m alone and don’t even have a houseplant I could kill off, I decided to spend 15-20 minutes a day singing. I found some sing-along sites for seniors on YouTube and today I had my first session. It was great! Not the singing – it was as bad as ever. But the physical act of singing is uplifting, and I hope over time it will improve my voice.
So poetry and music are now a daily part of my life. Things are going pretty well on Romadoor Avenue.
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Polly here.
I love every word of this.
And there is not much more I could possibly add to this.
Poetry and Music. A part of daily life.
The world could learn a lot from the practices of Linda Stowe.
Poetry and Song By Linda Stowe
