Mark's Blog

Some of you don’t know that I have a M.A. degree in English from the University of Mississippi. For two years of my life, I buried myself in literature of all kinds. I had all the standard courses in Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer, as well as specialized courses in both American and English literature. Of all the courses I took, perhaps the one that I enjoyed the most and that served me best—surprisingly– was a course in Modern Poetry.

My dad introduced me to poetry as a child. He had been required to learn hundreds of lines of poetry at a time when educators thought memorization to be a part of everyone’s education. He was far from sophisticated in his tastes; no, the poems I remember from my dad are mostly narrative poems like The Song of Hiawatha (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow),  Abou ben Adham Leigh Hunt), and The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay (Oliver Wendell Holmes). But I did grow up thinking that poetry was fun!

He also introduced me to The Charge of the Light Brigade—“Cannon to the right of them/Cannon to the left of them/Cannon in front of them . . . into the valley of death rode the six hundred”  And then came the lines I heard a million times: “Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die!”  For my dad, this took the place of “Because I said so!”—and I remember it today with great affection.

Since today is Opening Day  (capitalized you notice!) of  the 2011 baseball season, I have to mention one of his favorite poems—Casey At The Bat by Ernest L Thayer. Having been a fairly arrogant young baseball player, I suspect he was trying to teach me something about pride coming before a fall because I heard this poem often.  He used to walk up behind the dugout behind where I would sit after a vain at-bat and softly say, “Somewhere the sun is shining and somewhere the children shout, but there ain’t no joy in Mudville—Mighty Casey has struck out!” He didn’t quote it exactly right, but he made his point!

April is National Poetry Month so this is my start to a few musings on, about, and with poetry. Stick with me and follow the links to read the poems–you can skip Song of Hiawatha—and you will enjoy them, I’m sure.

Here’s a short verse that is a clue to the next piece. Can you identify the poet?

Fireflies In The Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,

And here on earth come emulating flies

That, though they never equal stars in size

(And they were never really stars at heart),

Achieve at times a very starlike start.

Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.