Poem in Your Pocket Day

This month is National Poetry Month and today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. This semester I took a poetry class at the U and it has been the best class I have ever taken! My professor, Dr. Janet Kaufman, is a talented teacher and our class was full of collaborative and interesting people. We had such a great dynamic community. I'm really sad it's over and I will miss it! This is my last English class and it's been such a joyful experience!!

our class at Red Butte Garden (my teacher is in the bottom left corner)

I have always loved poetry but I've really discovered how much it fits in my everyday life. Although I know poetry intimidates many people, it can actually be so much more accessible than other types of literature.

I could share dozens of poems with you that touched me this semester, but I've chosen just one of my very favorites.


“The Summer Day”
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?