All day Thursday on Facebook and Twitter, we posted tools to keep poetry alive, in case there was an apocalypse. Here is the list in its entirety.
Preparing for the Mayan Apocalypse:
Keeping Poetry Alive
1: Rhyme
An essential key. Keep your rhyming dictionaries close to you.
2: Form
Limerick, sonnet, free verse, prose…remember poetry comes in many forms.
3: Memorize Poetry
Do this and impress fellow survivors. If you know a poem already, you are ahead of the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVu4Me_n91Y
4: Do not fear big opening lines
See Emily Dickson: “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –/ In Corners – till a Day/ The Owner passed – identified –/ And carried Me away –
5: Read poetry out loud
Especially if you have a voice like Dylan Thomas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w
6: Poetry inspires
People, your soul and other art forms.
[vimeo 22176136]
7: Let nature inspire you
See Robert Frost: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep./ But I have promises to keep,/And miles to go before I sleep:”
8: Remember your favorite poems.
Keats’ “Ode to Melancholy” is one of our favorites: “Ay, in the very temple of Delight/ Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine”
9: Poetry is alive, so perform it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAx845QaOck
10: Even the mundane is glorious in poetry
See Neruda: “The moral of my ode is this:/ beauty is twice beauty/ and what is good is doubly good/ when it is a matter of two socks/made of wool in winter.
11: Poetry is a record for the generations, so you must write no matter what happens
See Whitman: “Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high;/ A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,/ Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.”
12: Poetry will always be everywhere
From collaged words, overheard conversations, simple gestures and movements. Whatever tomorrow brings, there will be poetry.
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