Last year, I wrote about hanging poetry around the house for a little painless and pleasant supplemental education over the summer. You choose the walls that your family is likely to spend time staring at anyway, and you put wonderful words and brilliant imagery in front of their faces.
Most of the poems from my last list are all tattered and stained now, so I’m picking out a new crop. I got a pad of card stock in earth tones for matting. Now I just have to remind my printer who’s boss, and voilà, everything is awesome.
Okay, fine, I wanted an excuse to buy card stock. I’m secretly in love with expensive paper. Not even my husband knows this about me, but now you know.
Here are the poems I’ve chosen for this year:
Where Did You Come From, Baby Dear? by George MacDonald
As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden
Intimations of Immortality (excerpt – the stanza with “trailing clouds of glory do we come”) by Wordsworth
April 5, 1974 by Richard Wilbur
The Garden by Ezra Pound
Cold Are the Crabs by Edward Lear
Domination of Black by Wallace Stevens
A Hero by Robert Service
Having Misidentified a Wildflower by Richard Wilbur
The Lanyard by Billy Collins
Sonnet CXLIII by Shakespeare
Sea Calm by Langston Hughes
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
Trolling for blues by Richard Wilbur
Examination at the womb door by Ted Hughes
The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams
That should hold ’em for a while.
Again, here’s last year’s list. I haven’t read a new poet in ages, and would love to branch out. Can you suggest anyone — preferably with specific poems? It’s okay if the subject or themes are over the kids’ heads, as long as the words sound good. I’d like to stick to shorter poems with reasonably simple language.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
The girl from Nantucket
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image: “I Saw the Figure Five In Gold” by Charles Demuth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
![“I Saw the Figure Five In Gold” by Charles Demuth [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANY_Met_demuth_figure_5_gold.JPG){kind=link}
