April is here! I’m not a fan of April Fool’s Day which is fine since the human, furred and feathered beings I live with do not appear to celebrate, and I wouldn’t have any idea how to fool them. We lead a simple life here on the farm, and I think a prank would stand out too much to be seen for anything except what it is.<\/p>\n
I do LOVE that April is National Poetry Month. We, as a species, do not read enough poetry, I think. It’s too hard or too deep or too esoteric, perhaps, and demands a stillness and thoughtfulness that is hard to carve out in our always on lives. April has been celebrated in poetry from T.S .Eliot’s famous opening to The Waste Land<\/a>:<\/p>\n April is the cruellest month, breedings to Chaucer’s Prologue\u00a0to the Canterbury Tales:<\/a><\/p>\n WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot, My plans for National Poetry Month include reading as much by Wendell Berry<\/a> as I can, creating some book spine poetry<\/a> and deciding what poem to carry around with me on Poem in Your Pocket day<\/a>, which will take place on April 21 this year.<\/p>\n Here’s your bit of poetry for today. Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things” is one of my favorites. A collage created around the text of my poem hangs by my desk.<\/p>\n Listen to Wendell Berry reading The Peace of Wild Things<\/a><\/p>\n And as a final treat…the choral version of the poem by\u00a0Joan Szymko. There are lots of renditions available on YouTube. This one is from the NJ All State Chorus in 2010:<\/p>\n
\nLilacs out of the dead land, mixing
\nMemory and desire, stirring
\nDull roots with spring rain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe drought of March hath pierced to the root,
\nAnd bathed every vein in such licour,
\nOf which virtue engender’d is the flower;
\nWhen Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
\nInspired hath in every holt and heath
\nThe tender croppes* and the younge sun
\nHath in the Ram <1> his halfe course y-run,
\nAnd smalle fowles make melody,
\nThat sleepen all the night with open eye,
\n(So pricketh them nature in their corages);
\nThen longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
\nAnd palmers <2> for to seeke strange strands,
\nTo ferne hallows couth in sundry lands;
\nAnd specially, from every shire’s end
\nOf Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
\nThe holy blissful Martyr for to seek,
\nThat them hath holpen, when that they were sick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n