THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
As a lover of poetry and a poet
of sorts, I am very interested in April, set aside as National Poetry
Month, thirty whole days to celebrate poetry. With
your indulgence, I want to depart from my usual history column and
write about poetry.
April as National Poetry Month was inaugurated in 1996 by the
We have but to examine
The
1.
To highlight the extraordinary
legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets.
2.
To introduce more Americans to
the pleasure of poetry.
3.
To bring poets and poetry to the
attention of the public in immediate and innovative ways.
4.
To make poetry a more important
part of the school curriculum.
5.
To increase the attention paid
to poetry by national and local media.
6.
To encourage increased
publication, distribution and sales of poetry books.
7.
To increase public and private
philanthropic support for poetry and poets.
Even though the
month of April 2006 is in its last two weeks, it is still not too late
to make poetry more visible and accessible to citizens.
Just now, with the writing of this column, and your reading it,
we are fulfilling Goal 5 above. If you are
a teacher reading this column, I hope you will think of ways you can
increase your students’ appreciation of poetry in the days remaining of
April, 2006. Your local book store has
poetry books for sale. Buy one and read it
with joy and pleasure. If you have the
capability of going online, you may access the
And, being a great fan of Union County’s Byron Herbert Reece
(1917-1958), poet extraordinary, I can plead for you to fulfill Goal 7
listed above by supporting the Byron Herbert Reece Society’s aim of
making the Reece Farm into a cultural center to honor the poet and his
poetry, and to aid future poets who might be inspired as they visit the
place where Reece thought so deeply and wrote so admirably.
I cannot close this article without sharing some personal
thoughts of how I have celebrated April, National Poetry Month, to this
date. I have sent my original poems to
several people in letters and sympathy cards already during this month,
and I will continue to do so until the end of April, and, indeed, all
year long. To dear friends and relatives
who have lost loved ones during the month of April, I sent them my
sonnet entitled “Death at
Times Is Kind.”
For my first great grandchild, born April 12, 2006, I printed
and framed my poem entitled “This Clay to Mold – A Mother to Her Child,”
which I hope my dear granddaughter Paula will take to heart and use as
a sort of idealistic guide for motherhood as she rears the precious
baby, Gavin Ernesto Berenguer-Aguirre,
entrusted to her and Ernesto for rearing.
I thought how I would like to go into the schools and teach
poetry workshops as I once did, or teach my own classes (as I did prior
to my retirement) the beauty of poetry and how students can write their
own. Just now, my circumstances of
care-giving for my husband do not permit me to engage in this
much-loved activity. But I can appreciate
all the teachers from my past who made me a
lover of poetry from elementary school through college and graduate
school. At
I will end this appeal for you to celebrate and enjoy poetry
during April, National Poetry Month, by ending with Byron Herbert
Reece’s quatrain that says so much about the love of poetry and how it
is written. His aim certainly has come
true:
“From chips and
chards in idle times,
I
made these stories, shaped these rhymes;
May
they engage some friendly tongue
When I am past the reach of song.”
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Updated September
27,
2009
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