04/20/2003

By TOM MAYO / Special contributor to The Dallas Morning News

National Poetry Month (the month formerly known as "April" before it was renamed by the Academy of American Poets) is more than half over. Here are a few suggestions for making the most out of the remaining 10 days.

Take a poem to lunch

Step 1: Call a friend and make a lunch date.

Step 2: Bring a poem with you to the restaurant.

Easy, wasn't it? Each of you can bring one poem, or agree in advance on a single poem. For inspiration, start with a good anthology: There are many excellent new ones. Consider Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered, edited by Catherine Bowman (Vintage Books, $12 paperback). Each author is introduced in a brief but helpful essay, and the selections are predictably quirky. From the middle of the mainstream, there is William Harmon's collection of the 500 most anthologized poems in the English language: The Top 500 Poems (Columbia University Press, $36.95). This is a solid collection, built upon the theory that 400 editors and anthologists can't be wrong. You be the judge!

Give a poem away

Library budgets are stretched thin, and for librarians pressed to do more with less, poetry is an easy category to cut back. This is your chance: Call a local school or library branch to see if they would like a volume or two for their collection. Perhaps you could focus on young readers, who are naturally drawn to the vivid images, rhythms and music of poetry.

The bookstores are full of oldies but goodies, many of which are included in the excellent Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America, edited by Donald Hall (Oxford University Press, $39.95). Its bland layout lacks illustrations, but it includes many classics that will appeal to a broad range of ages.

One of my favorite new titles for very young readers is Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems, written by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey (Voyager Books, $6 paperback). The publisher recommends this for 3-to-7-year-olds, but I would guess that even third-graders would have fun with this book. It leaves blank the last word of each poem and invites the reader to complete the rhyme, which leads right into the next poem. It's a clever way to turn passive readers into active ones, and the illustrations are superb.

Sign up for a poem a day

The Internet is a great source of poetry, and during April it gets even better. Every day this month, you can receive a poem delivered to your e-mail in box from a variety of sources. (What? You say your in box is already overloaded and you don't want more? You may need a poem a day more than you realize. You can thank me later.)

My first choice in this category is "Poetry Daily" (www.poems.com). The site operators have asked practicing poets to select a poem, old or new, and to write a few words about their selection. The variety is superb and the commentary is mostly interesting and occasionally phenomenal.

The Knopf Poetry Center (www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/) is another daily source of e-mailed poems. It features poems from titles still on the Knopf booklist, which provides an impressive assortment but is not as diverse as Poetry Daily. Another great source – and one that won't end on April 30 – is Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" (www.writersalmanac.org/). This is a daily radio broadcast (not carried by Dallas public radio) that includes a poem and will be sent (in text and with an audio link) to your in box every morning in time for your first cup of coffee.

Visit a birdbath near you

Dallasites can visit the Poet of Milton Avenue (a.k.a. Bruce Fogerty), who puts a stack of his poems in the birdbath on his front lawn early every morning, and whose daughter often restocks the supply in the afternoon. The POMA is a wordsmith who writes with a light touch and whose steadfast commitment to the poetic health of his neighbors is yet another reminder of poetry's ability to define and reinforce a community's sense of its own literary identity.

Locate Texas poetry

Finally, from the marketeers who brought us National Poetry Month: the National Poetry Map. This Web-based map (at www.poets.org/map/) will put you in touch with the work of Texas poets (starting with Lubbock's Walt McDonald, a Texas poet laureate), poetry readings and festivals, poetry organizations, workshops, and all other things poetical. Don't leave home without it!

Tom Mayo teaches "Law, Literature & Medicine" at Southern Methodist University's law school and at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.