When my granddaughters were about eight and ten, I offered to teach poetry as part of their homeschool curriculum. Every week we sat at my dining room table to read and write together.
It wasn’t long before Emmy asked, “Why are we reading more boy poets than girl poets?” A teachable moment. Because that’s what I studied in college, I explained. We spent the next year studying African-American and Native American poetry. Then Chinese, Japanese, Latin American. And lots of poetry by women.
The best moments were when we sat quietly with only the soft squeak of our pencils moving across the paper. Then we would read our work aloud, with no disclaimers. At the end of each year, we recited favorite poems to our captive audience of parents and grandparents.
Poem by poem, our lives had grown larger, our bond stronger. Edna St. Vincent Millay described this journey in her 1912 poem, Renascence.
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky—
No higher than the soul is high.
(lines 203-206)
Writer Karen Anderson lives in Traverse City. Her weekly essays are aired on IPR News Radio at 8:39 a.m. and 10:57 a.m. each Sunday.
