Although my mother is still alive, I felt orphaned on that rainy New York evening in 1991 when my father passed away. My father and I had a deep spiritual connection, and even though his passing did not come as a surprise, it was devastating and I still miss him. Born in Koeningsburg, Germany in 1921, my father, Edward Marquise was a Holocaust survivor, and a happy-go-lucky man. He was someone who cherished life and those he loved. He had a positive attitude, and as a toy salesman always loved telling jokes and making people laugh. With his young grandchildren he would get on the floor and play with them for hours on end. Everyone who met my father, not only loved him, but remembered him. Unfortunately, my dad was a long-term smoker, so in his 60s developed emphysema, which eventually robbed him of his old age. He died gracefully at the age of 71. I believe people have a choice to die, and my father decided his own fate. At the time, we were living in different cities. My mother phoned to say he was hospitalized with heart and lung issues. My father was told that he needed heart bypass surgery, but for many reasons he refused it. He said he was afraid to be “a vegetable,”  afterwards, but also because after witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, he was petrified by the sight of blood.

After my mother’s phone call, my husband, myself, and our three young children arranged to fly in from Montreal, where we lived at the time to be at his hospital bedside. My eldest daughter was seven, and very attentive to his care, handing him tissues to catch the lung remnants of 50 years of cigarette smoking. My middle daughter, was five and who was closest with him, stood petrified in the corner. My son was too young to understand what was happening. Looking back, I realize how intense and painful that hospital scene was.

During our visit, my father in his much-weakened voice, reiterated that he believed in quality, not quantity of life. He told us that he had gotten up for the first time in a couple of days to go to the bathroom. He said that he could not believe what the bathroom mirror shared with him. He admitted that he could no longer look at himself in the mirror because he was so thin and ill, and looked too much like he did the day he was released from Dachau’s Concentration Camp in 1947. He begged God to take him one way or another. During the hospital visit, we repeatedly told him we loved him. We knew he was going to die. My husband promised to always take care of me and together we promised to always take care of his grandchildren. This meant the world to him because he adored his grandchildren, Rachel, Regine, and Joshua.

Dad passed on the evening of our arrival. We were all at his bedside and I stroked the greasy hair on his recessed hairline exposing his prominent forehead. He looked peaceful and I sensed his relief of no longer needing tubes coming from every orifice of his body. He never wanted to live that way. He often reminded me to appreciate the moments, because he said that in life we never know what the next moment will bring. Before my father’s passing, we made him a few promises. First, that we would always take care of his grandchildren and second that we promised to focus on celebrating his life, instead of mourning it. The promises made on deathbeds are meant to be taken seriously. Every day I hear him whispering these words to me, “Live each day as if it were your last.”

For the first first ten years after my father’s passing, each Father’s Day I sent fresh cut flowers to his grave. I now live on the West Coast and admit that if I lived closer, I would rather visit. It’s been nearly 23 years now, and I am sad to acknowledge how much of our lives he missed observing. I no longer send flowers, but each Father’s Day I either write him a poem or a letter in my journal, a tradition I hope to continue for many years to come.

Here’s a poem I wrote last year on Father’s Day:

To My Father

As a child I sat on the borders of

Rockefeller Center in New York

as you taught Paul Newman to skate

and the staff patiently called you Mr. Mark

because they couldn’t pronounce your last name.

We’d arrive home for steak

and whipped potatoes

and vanilla pudding, your favorite meal

before your bedtime snack

of pumpernickel bread

and a smear of whipped

cream cheese.

Each work morning, you drove

to the corner diner sharing giggles

and charm to flattered waitresses

as they served steamy coffee

and cheese Danishes

in your favorite window seat.

Now nearly two decades since your passing,

I miss you more than ever and relish

every connection to your spirit.

Dad, I shall be forever warmed by you.

May you rest in peace.

Circa 1945

I have been thinking lately about the affect music has had on my life, and how it can elicit memories with different times or stages of life. For example, the Beatles song, “Let it Be,” reminds me of the late 1960s and studying French in Lausanne, Switzerland for the summer and being visited by my then boyfriend. One of the most amusing parts of that summer was listening to so many of the other students and locals sing American songs, perhaps not even understanding what they meant. But the background music was universal. This is a true testament to the power of music.

People often ask me what type of music I listen to and my answer is always, “It depends on my mood.” It is wonderful to know that we have such a variety of different tunes to choose from. While writing, I generally listen to instrumental or classical music. Some of my favorites are Music for Concentration and Inpspiration, Mozart’s Violin Concerto, Flute Concertos, Bach, Vivandi, and Grapelli. The only lyrical music I listen to while writing is Leonard Cohen. His songs really inspire me. Perhaps it is the poet in him. For long distance drives, I listen to artists such as Sting, The Beatles, Dan Fogelberg, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Elton John, John Mayer, and Rod Stewart. My favorite workout music includes selections from Sting, Michael Jackson, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel, to name a few.

In general, the power of music can be transformative. I find it amazing how the moment we hear a song, a sound or a mantra, we can be transported into a different world or transcend to a place of comfort. Songs also elicit memories in our lives. For example, listening to John Lennon, Ravi Shankar, and Joni Mitchell remind me of Woodstock. Back in 2001, while recovering from breast cancer surgery I turned to new age music to help heal me. Some of my favorites were Nawang Khechog, Chinmaya Dunster, Michael Benghiat, Margot Arnaud, Kim Roberston and Sindh Kaur.

Some people have rituals connected to listening to music, for example, The Dalai Lama devotes an hour every day to listening to Tibetan overtone chanting of ancient Buddhists as well as Hindu mantras. Many readers will know that he is the champion of the World Sacred Music Festival, which is dedicated to “the re-enchantment of the Earth.”

Whether the music you listen to is spiritual, religious, classical, folk or rock, like the ‘smile,’ music is a universal language of transcendence and transformation. The simple sound of birds singing is the sign of spring and can bring joy and a smile upon our faces. Outside my writing studio I have a bird fountain that runs from sunrise to sunset. The sound of water flowing is calming and healing. It is no wonder that certain sounds and certain music is fundamental to our happiness.

A New York Times opinion piece this past weekend called, “Why Music Makes Our Brain Sing,” really resonated with me in the authors’ examination of why music has such enormous intrinsic value. The writers who are neuroscientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute suggested that brain imaging has shown that listening to music during “peak emotional moments” results in the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which has been found to “respond to naturally rewarding stimuli like food and sex and which is artificially targeted by drugs like cocaine and amphetamines.” The researchers did a study about the brain’s reward system mimicking online music purchasing to see what happens when someone hears music they like and decides to buy it. They found a connection with the brain’s circuits and the accumulation of musical information gathered during our lifetimes enabling an individual to equate heard music with their pasts. Thus, “the act of listening to music may be thought of as both recapitulating the past and predicting the future. When we listen to music, these brain networks actively create expectations based on stored knowledge,” the researchers Zatorre and Salimpoor claimed.

DEAR CHERISHED READERS: I would be interested to hear about your favorite music? Please share with us. I love learning about new artists!

Standing shorter in stature than I expected, this gentle and humble man donned in a business suit and a baseball hat approached the podium and immediately set the bar low by stating, “I am not a public speaker; I am a writer.” However, for the next hour the audience remained still and mesmerized by his presence and his poignant message. O’Brien did not have to read from his books, all he had to do was share his compelling stories, as powerful spoken as they are written. He made a few points, so many of which resonated with me. One important one was the idea that action speaks louder than words. In referencing war, he said, if you believe in war you should go fight in it and not sit in your offices commanding troupes to the front lines. In other words, as a writing colleague of mine summarized, “if people believe in these wars, they should go to them and fight and not count on others to fight them for them.”

As someone, who believes people should be judged by their actions, I could not agree more with O’Brien who recounted some of the fictionalized stories from his books, making even non-believers, believers. As an advocate of writing for healing, I came to understand once again, that everyone copes with the perils of trauma differently. O’Brien chose to fictionalize or as he stated, “dramatize” his war experience, more specifically, being drafted into Vietnam. O’Brien’s books are not what one expects from war books referencing the casualties, blood, guts, guns, and artillery, but rather, they focus on the emotional truth of war—how a young man feels deep inside about being drafted and going to the combat zones. He discussed how in addition to those in combat affected by war, so are the families and entire communities are of the young men.

O’Brien referenced that for every noncombatant killed by accident, whether a woman, child, grandmother or grandfather, we make hundreds of enemies who will eventually want to take revenge. Because of this potential revenge, hostilities amongst people and nations is perpetuated for hundreds of years to come.

Another one of O’Brien’s points which I have often spoken about in my own writing is his fascination with memory. It’s interesting to discuss why we remember some things and forget others and also how we all remember different aspects of the same situation or scenario. I hope to address this in more depth in an upcoming blog getting closer to the memoir course I will be teaching this summer.

There is a lot I enjoy about O’Brien’s writing, including his candor and simplicity of writing. I am impressed that his books tend to appeal to both sexes in a way that most books about war do not. As I am of the same generation as O’Brien where many of my friends dodged the draft by fleeing to Canada, many of his pronouncements resonated with me. However, at this moment in time, what bothers me most about the perils of war is how the vets are treated once they return home. They have served their country, but are not carefully respected and taken care of, except possibly being honored at their own funerals. PTSD is an increasing problem and today more vets are dying from suicide than in actual combat. Surely there are numerous first person accounts on this and I am familiar with a few on my own. At present, I am coaching a friend who is writing his memoir, not necessarily about the events his experiences in the Vietnam War and tangentially how those days deeply affected him for the rest of his life.

A few years back, my eldest daughter was dating a veteran who went on four tours of Iraq in response to 911. As a new college graduate, he was sickened by the events surrounding 911 and so he enlisted himself. The events connected to his service lead to his first bout with deep depression. After some time, the doctors prescribed the twenty-something year old an anti-depressant. While visiting us in Southern California, he ran out of his medication and drove to the local VA. We live in a small community and personal service was expected but never received. He stood in line for hours and still returned to our house without medication. I had to call my private physician for a prescription. My daughter’s boyfriend was not surprised about how he was treated. “That’s the way it is,” he reported. Well, this is only one example of a sad state of affairs on how they are treated.

Not all veterans have O’Brien’s gift of the pen, and the opportunity to heal on the page. I bow to his efforts and his ability to share with his readers, now and in the future.

In a recent issue of Publisher’s Weekly, I read that between 2011 and 2012 e-book sales in the U.S. increased by over 44 percent. In 2012, eBook sales accounted for 20 percent of trade book sales. Supposedly print sales did not decrease, however, because so many bookstores have closed down, the online book sales have increased more than 21 percent. It was encouraging to learn that children’s and young adult fiction book sales have increased over 117 percent. This offers hope for the future generation. In my humble opinion is that it does not matter what or how ones reads, as long as one reads. In the end, publishers admit that across the generations, there has been a shift away from print to digital.

While I understand and appreciate the changing times and how I could not be able to even write this blog without advanced technology, I am somewhat saddened about these statistics. Therefore, I have decided to have a dual celebration today—to celebrate all those who have died in war and also to coin a new term, “Memorial Book Day.” Yesterday, I added bookshelves to my writing studio to accommodate the new stack of books on my floor, the results of working on my doctorate. I have rearranged the books, as the librarian I secretly always wanted to be, I organized everything in sections and in alphabetical order—nonfiction (memoir/journaling); fiction (technique and tips); psychology books and then of course, two shelves that house the full collection of Anais Nin Journals, the volumes of the Anais: An International Journal and A Café in Space: The Anais Nin Literary Journal. I also have about a dozen large binders with academic articles pertaining to my dissertation research. In the corner in a box on the floor are books to be donated because they are outdated—such as Publicity for Authors, published before our modern offering social media existed. Last time I did this reorganization, it was difficult finding a place to donate my unwanted books. Eventually, the local public library took some and the rest were graciously accepted Planned Parenthood, who have a very well-attended annual book sale.

While I admit to having an iPad where I download books to be read mainly during travel, or when immediate access is needed, I still crave holding a book in my hands and hearing the sound of the pages turning. Unless you are reading older books, there is no longer that “book smell,” or the scent of libraries, but the tactile portion of reading, for me, remains to be an important part of the reading experience.

I would love to hear what you think of these changing times, but in the meantime, here are some ideas for Memorial Day writing:
• Make a list of those who are gone before you and describe what they meant to you, then and now.

The May/June issue of Psychology Today has an article called, “The Enemies of Invention,” which shares other factors contributing to creativity and or a lack thereof:
• positive emotions broaden our perception and thought
• fear of failure hinders creativity
• fear of being evaluated hinders creativity
• optimism regarding innovation is beneficial
• concentration is a creativity killer

This last point really resonated with me. I often have the best writing ideas when I am doing something else, like driving on the freeway. I have not yet trained myself to use a tape recorder while driving, but I have been known to pull aside and put my hazard lights on in order to jot some notes in my journal, whether it’s an opening line for a poem, an article idea or book idea—my little journal holds many treasures.

In his essay, “Reflections on Writing,” Henry Miller says, “writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order to eventually become that path himself.” Creativity is also inspired by the idea that we are writing for someone in particular. For example, while working on my memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal, I had a photo of my grandmother on my desk. While writing. I imagined writing just for her. I visualized her seated across the table from me and I was telling her my story. I had a deep need to share my story with her, and I was also to share it with the world. As John Daido Loori says in his book, The Zen of Creativity, “the art of creation begins with the need to express oneself. Sometimes, the need to write builds in us almost imperceptibly; sometimes it comes on suddenly,” and more importantly to stimulate the creative process, it’s important to be mindful of what triggers your own creativity, and make a point of keeping it in your life. In other words, have your muse nearby—whether it is a person place, person, or thing that initiates your creative process.

As we get older, and our children leave the nest, our priorities evolve. For those who have children, I feel bad for those who were unable to be with them, or those who mourn the loss of their own mother’s passing. My hope for all of us, with children or not is that we daily connect with Mother Earth and thank her for her timeless beauty. For those with mothers, hopefully they were able to display a token of love by some gesture of appreciation, whether with flowers, cards, gifts or phone calls. For me, the little things in life, like love and family become more important as we age. An extra gesture, visit, phone call or card means that someone cares enough to spend the time thinking about us. It takes so little time to express gratitude and I often wonder why we don’t do it more often.

Rachel arrived bearing me a homemade gift which I will cherish forever. She crafted me a personalized memory box made from of an old printer drawer. For the past six months she has been collecting mementos that reminded her of me—my accumulated passions, which she artfully placed in each little compartment, which I hope to hand in my meditation room. Josh, also with a busy life, admitted to not getting me anything and I told him his time was the best present, but his conscience brought him somewhere else, because while walking through the flea market yesterday he wandered into a jewelry booth and picked out a silver meditation ring that brought tears to my eyes. About the same time, my 27-year old daughter and her husband were calling from to say hello from afar. I had this deep sense of bliss and warmth inside. I felt I had accomplished all I needed in life—I raised loving and thoughtful kids who are now on their own.

Once a mother, always a mother, but when your children leave home there’s a certain identity crisis that strikes. An article in yesterday’s New York Times, called, “After the Children Have Grown,” by Madeline Levine resonated with me. Levine admits that after her kids left home she has had trouble figuring out who she was or who she will be moving forward in her life. Like her, I feel as if I have changed over the years, priorities and attentions, but core feelings as a mother have not changed. I wondered why her words resonated with me so much until I kept reading and learned that she was also a mother and a psychologist.

Like Levine, I realize that special times together are numbered and should always be cherished. Levine states that the concept of “empty-nest syndrome” is no longer a clinical term and that psychologists reject the term particularly because it mainly affects stay-at-home moms, who are becoming more and more rare. It is good that priorities evolve and women no longer sit around moping about children being gone, but rejoice in their own discoveries and achievements as adults. I also realize that our children need us in different ways. We simply need to “be present.” They want us as their listener and confidant offering unconditional love in a judgmental world.

Whether we have children or not, we need to acknowledge the beauty of evolution and change. As Levine says, our younger selves dissolve into menopausal clouds, sometimes we are too old to realize certain dreams and are now living with choices we made. I like her thought that “Chickens tend to come home to roost at about the same time children grow up.” As we grow older, we seem to reflect more, she says—What did we do right? Where did we fail? How do we spend our remaining time? And who will show up to help with the transition? These are all questions that I think about every day and which are all gentle reminders of our identity.

I have been lucky to have nurtured a career as a writer which I was able to weave into the daily chores of motherhood, and so my transition might have been easier than others. In the same vein, men who retire who have had hobbies their entire lives, find their transition easier. Those whose life was “only work,” might find their health deteriorating after they retire.

I am starting to love and enjoy the golden years, as I look back with a certain amount of wisdom and “deja-vus.” I am embracing the journey and aging gracefully like I have always advised my parents, family, and patients to do. As we detach and our kids move into their own lives, it’s not a form of abandonment, Levine says, but, an expression of a job well done.

I have always wondered why eulogies are only written after someone has passed. That person never gets to hear all the wonderful things about them that they might not have been mindful of. After all, writing a eulogy is a form of gratitude. Expressing gratitude is something we should all do more of anyway. I confess, however, that I once started a file of eulogies, some written by others, some written by myself. It is not that I sat home waiting for loved ones to die or anything like that, it’s just that it felt right to honor and recount what I appreciated about them. This is in the same vein as Pablo Neruda’s wonderful collection of Odes. One of my favorites of his is “Ode to an Artichoke.” Perhaps a vegetable’s form of death is it being harvested, so this works, however, an ode can be written to anything alive or dead. In fact, once on our anniversary I wrote an ode to my husband. It was a sort of honoring. A way to give thanks and express gratitude rather than buying one of those patented Hallmark cards, which never seem to say what we want it to say.

Writing an ode or a eulogy is also a way to clear the mind and to regain a new form of appreciation. It could also be a way to see through darkness, by speaking from the heart and soul. Sending an ode or a mock eulogy to someone can offer encouragement during difficult times.

When writing an ode or eulogy, the first thing to be decided is the tone. You might want to stick with the individual’s tone and what suits their sensibility. Sometimes humor works. For example, I know a few humor writers who read my blog, and you know your eulogy will be humorous. After deciding the tone then make a list of the individual’s qualities, interests, passions, and poignant biographical markers. Beside each quality give an illustration from a real life example or story. When writing a eulogy, it is a good idea to think in terms of a beginning, middle and end, but it might not be as important when writing an ode. The best eulogies, like the best books, stories or poems are those remembered long after they are heard. They are specific and consist of visuals and details. They are simple and sincere and written from the heart.

Here is a link for some famous and well-crafted eulogies:

http://www.eulogyspeech.net/famous-eulogies/#.UX6ZPYJhyu5

Here is a link to “Ode to An Artichoke” by Pablo Neruda:

http://allpoetry.com/poem/8496979-Ode_To_The_Artichoke-by-Pablo_Neruda

The healing power of poetry is not a new phenomenon. In fact, during The Civil War, Walt Whitman read poems to wounded soldiers. His poems highlighted war, courage, and the military life. Historically speaking, there have been many physicians who were poets. William Carlos Williams is one who comes to mind as writing poems between patients on the prescription pads kept in his pocket. Other physician-poets include John Keats, Chekov, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Poets tend to be in touch with their deepest emotions and the best physicians are those who are also able to tap into the deepest part of the psyche.

More recently, poetry has been incorporated into a number of medical school programs, including Yale and Harvard Schools of Medicine. In her article in The New York Times entitled, “The Doctor as Poet,” (December 1, 2011), by Pauline Chen, M.D. explained how poetry can help physicians empathize and understand what a patient is going through. This can be done by both the reading and writing of poetry.

Perie Longo, Ph.D., a Santa Barbara psychotherapist and our second Poet Laureate, says that it is important to remember that “the focus of poetry for healing is self-expression and growth of the individual, whereas the focus of poetry as art is the poem itself.” For more than two decades Longo has been deeply involved in poetry therapy including as executive Director of the National Association for Poetry Therapy and teaching at the Santa Barbara Cancer Center since 2008. In her groups, she has many techniques to help individuals write poetry. For example, she will sometimes take a phrase from a poem and repeat it for each group member to fill in their thoughts out loud before they write their own poem. Once she used the phrase, “I have a right,” and was astounded where each member took that phrase, and the impact of that exercise.

In his well-crafted book, The Call of Stories, writer and physician Robert Coles, writes about how over the years poets who became ill were also inspired to share their experience through poetry. He says, “It prompted them to look not only inward but also backward and forward—to ask the most important and searching questions about life’s meaning.” Coles is an advocate of all narratives and in his book he accentuates the power of poetry and how he admires poets and the merging of poetry and medicine. “Like patients,” he says, “poets are probably holding on for dear life to some words.”

Perie Longo in addition to other local poets such as Lois Klein and Christine Kravetz teach in the California Poets in the Schools Program and find the students quickly become inspired to write poetry.

In the memoir classes I teach, I focus on the healing power of writing using both the prose and poetic form. I always have a section devoted to poetry because it seems to be a good way for writers to summarize the important details of the story they want to tell. This exercise can also serve as an outline for a larger piece of work. Writing a poem about what you are feeling is a way to embody your feelings and become one with them. Sometimes the best way to start is with an image or an emotion or maybe even a word and seeing where it goes.

After reading and adoring Robert Frost and Walt Whitman during elementary school, my real appreciation for poetry came during a Billy Collins reading when I was in graduate school. There was something magical and crafty about the way he strung words together. I understood his observations of the world around him; they were unique but universal. Further, he had a sense of humor. I admire and aspire to do this myself.

Most of the poetry teaching I do is connected to writing for healing, partly because of my nursing background and partly because poetry has repeatedly served as a tool for me during some of my own physical and psychological healing journeys.I am always astounded when I ask students what their favorite poetry book is. The response is often that they don’t read poetry, and my response to them is that one cannot write good poetry, if one does not read good poetry. Sometimes reading an anthology or collection can help you decide on your favorite poet. Some suggestions might be Good Poems by Garrison Keillor, The Oxford Book of American Poetry by David Lehman, Editor, or Poem a Day, by Karen McCoster and Nicholas Albery, Editors.

Like the clothes we wear, there are days when certain poets resonate with us more than others. For example, there are days when I love reading any works by Rumi. Other days my favorite poet is Pablo Neruda. While on other days I want to relish in the words of Mary Oliver or Molly Peacock. But, I confess that I am always in the mood for Billy Collins, mainly because his poems are so diverse and connect to the ordinary things going on in our lives. He notices what we might notice but don’t necessarily take the time to write about.

During National Poetry Month there are a number of websites you can check out as a way to discover new poets. For example, this week, I discovered a great new poet by way of The American Academy of Poets (Poem-A-Day). Her name is Jennifer Chang and here is her poem:

on my birthday

I want a future
making hammocks
out of figs and accidents.
Or a future quieter
than snow. The leopards
stake out the backyard
and will flee at noon.
My terror is not secret,
but necessary,
as the wild must be,
as Sandhill cranes must
thread the meadow
yet again. Thus, autumn
cautions the cold
and the wild never want
to be wild. So what
to do about the thrum
of my thinking, the dangerous
pawing at the door?
Yesterday has no harmony
with today. I bought
a wool blanket, now shredded
in the yard. I abided by
dwelling, thought nothing
of now. And now?
I’m leopard and crane,
all’s fled.

Here is a list of some great poetry sites to check out:

Knopf Doubleday —newsletters@email.knopfdoubleday.com
Poetry.com—http://www.poetry.com/ —write a poem and get it reviewed for free
Poets.org—Poets.org—poetnews@poets.org
Poetry Archive—http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do
Poetry Daily—http://poems.com/
The Poetry Foundation—http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Speaking of poet laureate emeritus’, while looking through some of my teaching files I stumbled upon some words of wisdom from Santa Barbara’s very first poet Laureate,Barry Spacks. I have received his permission to share this informative document that I used when teaching a course at UCSB Extension called, “The Poet’s Notebook.”

Everything You Need to Know about Poetry
According to Barry Spacks
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” ~Robert Frost

• Poetry wants to charm, fascinate, and compel attention. It offers a fresh path through long-known places, a way of going that’s odd and new.
• A poem will usually have a subject, make a “point” (even several)—but what lifts it into language-specialness is tactics, an appealing method of drawing us in—seduction, absolutely—a fetching manner of “coming on.”

“If it is a wild tune, it is a poem.”
and: “We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick.”
~Robert Frost

• Wild tune. Straight crookedness. Contradictory supports. Wildness tends toward chaos, the danger of incomprehensibility, untamed eccentricity, astounding but baffling crookedness. . . hence the need for tune, which is a principle of order, of sanity, straightness. If it’s just a tune, if it’s only straight-to-the-point. . .no tears, laughter, revelation, freshening, surprise. If it’s only a wildness, then we’re lost and pathless. We need both intent, cause-effect, sequence, “point,” as well as the unexpectedness that marks living language with the unduplicatable flavor of one writer’s personality, thought, speech patterns, style, values, and concerns.

In 1966, the Academy of American Poets designated April as National Poetry Month resulting in celebrations around the country. According to the Academy the purpose of National Poetry Month is to:

• Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
• Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
• Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
• Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

In my own mailbox during the month of April I receive poems and articles related to poetry from various organizations, friends and colleagues. One of my favorites arrived this morning from Poet Molly Fisk who is most known for her coaching, radio shows and infamous Poetry Boot Camp, an online workshop to generate new work and jumpstart the creative process. As Fisk says, “What is not to celebrate about poetry?” During this month Fisk invites poets to write a poem a day, in an on-line classroom where you write and share and commenting is optional, but often helpful. For more information, contact molly at molly@mollyfisk.com.

Next week: Other ideas on how to celebrate National Poetry Month.