SOL 3/31: Friday Ramblings

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Lisa, Melanie, and Lanny

for hosting this meeting place each day in March

and for nurturing our writing lives.

I had forgotten it was Poetry Friday until I saw Tara's post last night. Our host for this week, Jama, asked that we share a favorite Billy Collins' poem in honor of his birthday.  The poem that Tara shared, "How to Read a Poem," is one that I frequently shared in my classroom. Not wanting to be redundant, I headed to the Poetry Foundation site to peruse other poems by Billy Collins.  I didn't find any that were favorites, but I did find a new-to-me short one that I liked.   But I failed to write down the title and it's taken me about a half hour of reading more Billy Collins' poems this morning to find it again.  I'll share the link now before I lose it again - "Poem" by Billy Collins.  I love the first two lines:  

"It's like writing a short letter

to everyone in the world at once,"

And here's the link to many more poems by Billy Collins on the Poetry Foundation's site.  And while I was checking out other resources about Billy Collins, I found this delightful Poetry Off the Shelf audio, The Poetry Garage about a parking garage where the floors are named after poets (instead of cities or sports teams).  You can listen to a poem and read about the poet featured on your floor while you wait for the elevator.  Billy Collins is on floor two and his poem is "Forgetfulness."  Fast forward to 7:47 in the Poetry Garage audio and you can hear Billy Collins read part of the poem.   Or just click on the poem title to hear him read all of the poem.  

And I'll close this rambling poetic post about Billy Collins with his words from his biography on the Poetry Foundation site:  “I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.”  As you can see, I'm easily distracted and willing to join the poet in stopping by those amazing distractions along the rational path through the day.  Happy Poetry Friday!

Head over to Heidi Mordhurst's blog, 

My Juicy Little Universe,

for this week's round-up of poetic goodness.  

Thanks, Heidi, for hosting this week!