It’s poetry month and we asked our community to answer 3 important questions, one of them being…
What is the poem you’d give to an alien?
Here are some of their answers.
Irene L. Wells
Executive Assistant
New Jersey State Council on the Arts
Do you want to dance/ when you’re alone/ in front of all your fears/ with the passion/ of a tribal ritual/ to make it all better?
–Gary Winkel, “Do You Want To Dance?”
Mary Rizzo
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice and Associate Director of Digital and Public Humanities Initiatives in American Studies and History
Rutgers, Newark
I’d probably keep them pretty confused and give them “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll. Or, who knows, maybe the aliens would know exactly what slithy toves are…
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:/ All mimsy were the borogoves,/ And the mome raths outgrabe
-Lewis Carrol, “Jabberwocky”
Richard Jeffrey Newman
Poet
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,/ Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,/ Out of the Ninth-month midnight,/ Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot
-Walt Whitman, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking”
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