National Poetry Month, National Architecture Month, and Camille Paglia’s Birthday
April is both National Poetry and National Architecture Month. Admittedly I don’t know a whole lot about architecture and probably take the art form for granted more often than not (which is a pity as I am sure there is a lot to appreciate in the architecture world — perhaps I should start another blog like “I Wish I Was a Scientist” called something like “I Don’t Know Jack About Architecture”). I will try and put architectural appreciation on my long list of things to accomplish.
Poetry on the other hand is something that I like to think of myself as being quite familiar with. While I love all forms of literature I would have to say that poetry is probably my favorite. I have been writing my own poetry since I was in elementary school and probably have been reading poems for almost that long (I grew up on Shel Silverstein books). While I would one day love to write my own novel or a book of philosophy/theory, I think that to publish my own collections of poems would be about the height of wonderfulness for me. I love poetry (falls into the same line as “I like Books, Books are Good”).
To celebrate National Poetry Month I told myself I was going to try and read and write more poetry in April. As far as the writing goes I need to get started but I did succeed in finding a book on poetry to read today. I came upon it by pure chance while compiling my list of happy birthday wishes for April 2nd. Camille Paglia, one of my favorite authors and American Intellectuals, was born on this day in 1947. Her most recent book, Break, Blow, Burn happens to be a personal survey of hers of 43 great poems. Fortunately for me the Hughes Main Library of Greenville SC (my place of employment) had this book available. I have already taken it out and it is sitting next to me on my desk (of course I have not had the chance to read any of it yet but I intend to during lunch). I am very excited about this, 1). beacause I love poetry and 2). it has been entirely too long since I last read any Paglia. For anyone who has not read anything by Camille Paglia I strongly recommend her, though she does have a bit of a reputation for pissing people off. I believe some of her articles may be archived on Salon.com.
I urge everyone to try and embrace the two art forms that are being celebrated this month. Read some poetry, visit a museum of architecture, all around just get out and enjoy the art and culture around you — that is a very healthy thing to do.
~Nathaniel
ps. Sorry for all the links on this post, I kind of got out of control (also through in some shameless self promotion).
Tags: poetry, writing, National Poetry Month, National Architecture Month, Camille Paglia, Architecture, reading
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April 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm
An example of why Paglia may really piss some people off appears right away in here introduction to “Break, Blow, Burn” where she writes that “few literature professors know how to ‘read’ anymore.” Personally I love the way she can stir up controversy and scathingly criticize institutions that perhaps do not recieve that kind of criticism enough.