Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Good grief, I'm on a poetry kick again...

How weird is this! Every few years, I get on one of these endless trips where I have to read and write poetry 24/7. I think it has been about five years since the last kick so I am just about due. When I was in high school, I was in the Pegasus poetry program from San Francisco State. Several well-known local poets reviewed submissions by promising high school students and those of us (un)lucky enough to be chosen had to read first for assemblies at our schools and then for a large gathering at State. I did not submit any poetry but my Creative Writing teacher, Mary Donovan, submitted a body of work on my behalf and there I was, chosen and pissed off about it because it was not my choice. Miss Donovan did not understand my trepidation - she felt that since I was regularly missing school due to performances with the San Francisco Children's Opera Company (a repertory company of which I was a principal cast member), I had no problem getting up in front of people. Well, yea, in a theatre with the audience blacked out and performing as someone other than myself. Poetry is a very personal thing and involves feelings that some people do not necessarily want to share with the world. After bitching and moaning about the whole thing (and a few hysterical phone calls to and from my parents and the school administration about this) I reluctantly agreed to participate in the program (especially since it meant more time OUT of the classroom and I was all about that).

So anyway, I was re-reading some Dylan Thomas this evening and came across the following poem that he wrote about his birthday. Now, it is strange enough that he, like me, is a Scorpio (I was born October 29), but it is really weird that he shares a birthday with Rex Jackson (October 27). Whoa. Now THERE is very strange match!

So, here is the poem I have been reading and thinking about:

"My birthday began with the water -
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days"

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