Simply Dimply

No, this week’s simple pleasure isn’t about smiling. I just wanted my title to rhyme.

Today, I'm  yakking about  this stuff.  

Now, I realize that not everyone reading this will *get* this simple pleasure. I’ve come to realize that poetry is like a music style. You either love it, or it hurts your ears.  

Put me in the love it column.

I think there must be some kind of poetry gene, and I was born with it. My paternal grandfather, the fiery evangelist from yesterday’s post, was a great lover of verse.

And then there's the Duchess...  

While most kids have a favorite storybook from their childhood and remember sitting on their mother’s lap as she turned the colorful pages, my best memories are of sitting in the kitchen, or just about anywhere, as mine turned the colorful words.

Longfellow is her favorite, and she interjected him regularly. It was impossible to leave the breakfast table any morning of April 18^th before she began,  Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere… Of course, I never wanted to leave anyway. I stayed for the whole ride and hung on every word like Revere to the reigns.   

I sure hope the sister doesn't recognize this poetry book that I never returned to her...

I’m sad to report that I’m not a poet myself, though that’s not for lack of trying. As a little girl growing up, I fancied myself a great one. I bought those black and white composition books and sat outside for hours, writing Odes.

Because it’s always an Ode if it’s written outside, you know.

Little Debbie Seventh Grader tried to turn her angst into verse as well. Since absolutely nothing rhymes with the word Philip, I turned to free verse. Let’s just say that there are some things I’m mighty grateful that I never hoarded.

After a while, I realized that I wasn’t called to write poetry; I was just called to love it, and love it I have for nearly 50 years.

I say without exaggeration that I can sit for hours with a good anthology. I don’t have a favorite poem or poet, either, although I actually tried to photograph some favorites for this post. I gave up because it was taking too long.

It all depends on my mood.

 From ballads to sonnets, I love them all.

 (ok, maybe not e.e. cummings. he bugs me.)

  

It’s so important to me that I have tried my level best to pass the passion to the next generation.  I spontaneously burst into random acts of senseless rhyming just like my mother did, but it doesn’t appear that either daughter ever caught the bug. I blame their left- brained father who apparently stunk up the gene pool.

So I'm saving my books and my hope for the next generation. In the meantime, enjoying poetry is this week's simple pleasure.  
   

***** 

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The Simple Pleasures…

(It’s not as if I didn’t warn you, folks…)