Try as you might, it's quite a hard deed
To find appropriate time to read
Novels for pleasure throughout the semester
Without it becoming a lame source of pester,
Know this, there's a way to stay literary
That isn't nearly as time-consuming or scary
As committing yourself to the vast hours needed
To ensure your new book will get read-ed,
Literature comes in all kinds of forms
Including one category that always bends norms,
Whether haikus or free verse or whatever you call 'em
That's right, this is the poetry column!
So please excuse this gimmick and these lame rhymes
But you wouldn't believe the number of times
I've found myself torn between dueling desires
Raging in me like unquenchable fires
The desire to pursue my bookish ways
To satiate curiosity or vanquish malaise
And the need to do all the things I must do
The studies and whatnot I commit myself to,
Sometimes it seems that I can't catch a break
To get time to myself for some bookish intake
But luckily poetry offers a way
To ingest dreams and stories that won't take all day,
Sure, there are lyrical poems and epics and stuff
But as for short poems, there's more than enough
For bite-sized punches of words so pristine
That can fit nice and cozy into any routine
A poem a day keeps illiteracy away
... is something this one dude named Kevin will say
Okay, this poem is losing its steam
Maybe a better choice for a theme
Would have been...
Okay, I'll just go on ahead and call it quits right there.
Many of you probably reserve summers and breaks for leisure reading, but for those of us that want to keep our literary diets interesting during a semester that may not have any room for the more liberal artsy courses, poetry offers an ideal solution for bite-sized/grab-and-go/other-fast-food-cliche imaginative stimulation. From E.E. Cummings to Shel Silverstein, there are a variety of popular poets that work with short form poetry one could pick up read with just a few free minutes.
Book of the week: "Life on Mars" by Tracy K. Smith. For the past few weeks, I've been occasionally picking up this cosmic collection of interplanetary poetry, reading a poem or two now and then and it's made for a wonderful reading experience. In fact, I'm just going to use the rest of this column to rave about this volume of poetry. In almost every poem, Smith makes use of intergalactic imagery to express and complement forays into her feelings, memories of her father (who incidentally worked on the Hubble telescope), her thoughts of the future and our collective imagination in relation to the final frontier. The space-age wordplay and references to the cosmos help her personal sentiments and thoughts resonate more deeply, adding a sense of wonder that magnifies the emotions without overpowering them. By alternating between grandiose poetic explorations of our society's relationship with the future and bittersweet personal recollections, frequently within the same poem, Smith manages to bring universality and cosmic significance to what otherwise might just ordinary sentimentalism. Highlights include the titular poem, "My God, It's Full of Stars," and the poems whose titles end "&co."
Kevin Criscione is a junior majoring in English. He can be reached at Kevin.Criscione@tufts.edu.
