Why #NationalPoetryMonth?  Because poetry matters.

Why this website? Because what inspires and impassions teachers is worth sharing.

Poetry, by slowing us down and focusing our attention, can help us engage in complex truths and potent emotions and yield poignant insights into what is most significant and enduring in our work and lives.

I’ve always found these lines from William Carlos Williams’ poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” deeply true. Though I’m not sure if I can articulate what they actually mean.  I’ll leave that to others.  In his Foreword to Teaching with Heart, Parker J. Palmer, wrote the following:

William Carlos Williams got it right when he wrote the poem with which this foreword begins: “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” For millennia, men and women have been turning that truth around by relying on poetry for news that is life giving and empowering, as the stories in [Teaching with Heart] demonstrate.

In the mass media, today’s bad-news stories about American education will be old news tomorrow. Of course, we cannot ignore these stories—they point toward problems we need to solve if we want our teachers to have the support they need to keep serving our children well. But we who care about education, and those teachers whose work we value, must find sources of sustenance for the long haul, and poetry provides some of what we need.

Unlike the stories told in the mass media, the stories told by poetry will not be old news tomorrow. “Literature is news that stays news,” said the poet Ezra Pound, because it taps into the bottomless resources of human community and the human heart.  For that—and for all the competent, compassionate, committed, and courageous teachers in our schools—we can give great thanks. 

Well put, Parker.