[sunbug]

Poetry… that call came from Beauty and the Beast (my parents vetted it for me) and I am thankful. Ron Pearlman was a former Shakespearean actor.
And not only was there this mythical/real underworld below the (dragon tunnels) but also worlds of poems and poets…Shakespeare and Frost I knew…but new names echoed in my young head…and I had to find every poem recited…every poet mentioned!
Libraries and bookstores called! I eagerly scanned shelves and flipped through volumes searching for these treasures made of words and sounds and images!
I gained a reputation among my friends of being someone who memorized a lot of stuff. Heh heh. But I loved it! It must have seemed strange but in my preteen and early teen years names like Percy Bish Shelly and Walter De la Mare and Lord Byron…danced in my head!

During a break in a youth play production, I recited (Xanadu-Samuel Taylor Coleridge) to the musical arranger. She looked at me and said “I have a challenge for you. Look up Alfred Noyse, “The Highwayman.”
I did…and it became my new favorite! That one was “acted out.” To be clear no one was making me memorize…I had zeal for it!
The greatest challenge because of the rhythm and wording was “Fern Hill,” yes Dylan Thomas. I loved and love it…moving through the images…walking through the orchards hearing the foxes bark “clear and cold” and the “sabbath ringing slowly in the pebbles of the holy stream.”

the wishes “racing through the house high hay…”

It’s especially poignant and freeing at the same time. The last line always catches me. “I sang in my chains like the sea.”

And one of my very favorites but I have no idea which translation I memorized…Renoir Marie Rilke…

And to wind back to dragons but only the opening lines Rilke: How should we be able to forget those myths at the beginnings of all people? The myths about dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses?

Because of all these poets including “ “new”poems I learned from Frost and Shakespeare…I began writing my own poems.

B&B was a call to adventure!!

Yes, there was a beast in the tunnels but the treasure was not a prince or princess…the treasure and beauty was words and poetry!