SOLC17 3/31 And Poetry Friday - Happy Birthday to Billy Collins

Yes, we're moving into the month of March, with a new SOLC challenge and it's already number three and time for the weekend! Go to the Two Writing Teachers website to find all who link there!

I also post in the PoetryFriday group. This time I've been asked by Heidi Mordhurst at My Juicy Little Universe to a celebration party for the poet Billy Collins. His 76th birthday is March 22nd, and some of us are adding to that special event by posting a favorite poem by Billy Collins. Thanks for hosting this celebration, Heidi!

        When I taught, among some classic poets, and some new poets popular with early adolescents, my go-to poet to share with my students was Billy Collins' poems and the poetry site he began when he served as Poet Laureate of the United States. If you don't know it, it's titled Poetry 180 and you can access it here. He began it to share poems he felt were accessible to high school students, but most are also good to share with middle school aged students as well. And new poems are added often. They speak of real life, connect to teens, show current problems in our world,  make kids (and teachers) laugh. Billy Collins' poems don't always speak about just teen life, but they do speak of life and the way one observes things. I always thought it showed my students that they can write poetry in their unique voices about their lives without worrying if it really is a poem. Reading and considering Billy Collins' words helps that worry. Yes, we did work with more exacting forms and learned poetic devices. But time and again when we shared favorite lines and/or poems, Billy's were shared often. Here is one of my favorites of his. You won't be surprised that's it's about books and libraries. 

It is titled "Books" from Sailing Around The Room
           and begins:

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus
I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
each one stitched into his own private coat,
together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I picture a figure in the act of reading,
shoes on a desk, head tilted into the wind of a book,

       Find the rest here! And enjoy while you're singing "Happy Birthday!"