Why I Love Poetry

I love poetry. I love poetry so much that I married a poet. Writing a good poem (to paraphrase T.S. Eliot) is like scrunching the world into a little ball and throwing it at the reader. I used to write poetry myself but my wife writes so much better. So I stick to children’s books. And have occasionally translating the poems of prominent Israeli poets into English.

In my final year of high school (grade 13, I know, weird, but true) we had an incredible English teacher, Mr. E.W. Benoit. We were a class of science nerds but he promised to get us to love literature. And he did. We learned four Shakespearean tragedies in the first three months of the year. I can can remember entire passages from King Lear.

I sold most of my high school books, but kept the book of poetry we learned that year. It had an article entitled, “How Does a Poem Mean.” And many classic poems that I read over and over. T.S. Eliot might have been an anti-semite, but boy could he write!

Oh, and somewhere in the book (published in 1964!) there was a poem of a young, promising Canadian writer named Leonard Cohen.

But, looking back, my love for poetry goes back even further, to grade seven. That’s when I fell in love with many poets, but in particular Lewis Carroll and all his nonsense.

And it was all because of the contest of Mrs. Parkinson.

Mrs. Parkinson was our teacher in six and seventh grade. I can’t remember what she looked like, and can’t find her on the internet. She might have been nondescript. But she changed my life.

In 1962 she announced a poetry competition. Whoever could memorize the most lines of poetry during the school year would win the class award.

I got at it with a vengeance. I was a real wuss as a kid. I envied Miriam Eve Shnitzer and Diane Kriger who outperformed me in most subjects. Here was an opportunity to shine. I started to memorize oodles of poems. During recess we would recite the poems to Mrs. Parkinson and she would keep score.

The scores were not published. Another pupil, Ira Greenblatt would ask me, “How many lines have your memorized so far?” If I told him, “Over two hundred,” he would retort, “I’ve learned over four hundred myself.”

So instead of playing catch at recess,  I played catch up the whole year long with Ira Greenblatt. Would this kid beat me to the coveted award? I memorized poem after poem. I still remember my favorites: the Walrus and the Carpenter, Father Williams, and the beamish Jabberwocky.

At the end of the year Mrs. Parkinson announced the winner. It was me, with 914 lines of memorized poetry. Ira Greenblatt had learned about 150 lines. He had been pulling my leg all year.

I don’t remember what trophy I received (if at all), but I had fallen in love with poems. And it has stuck ever since.