Enjoying Kasey's (& Nada's) reflections on "what it means to me".

Poetry was not a big part of my childhood. Music, reading & public recitation were, however. There were a lot of school & church plays, speeches from American history to be memorized & recited, hymns & campfire songs & so on. I remember singing hymns & songs all through the long bus rides to summer Y camp. That's how they used to keep us occupied.

"Fair are the meadows,
fairer still the woodlands,
clothed in the beauteous[?] garb of Spring..."

I do remember having to memorize & recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade" for my 5th-grade English class.

Most of the pleasure of poetry in those days came from the silliness involved in class recitals - the many ways kids would find to obliterate the poems.

The NY School can be understood as an outgrowth of this phenomenon.

I think I learned to enjoy reading poetry later, by way of reading fiction. Fiction lights up the imaginative faculties - you learn to "see" the world in the book. & poems are little fictions.