Happy National Poetry Month!
While I think of my new memoir Scrap as being hybrid (a mix of genres, such as flash, poetry, playscript, essay) with flash the predominant genre, I thought I’d look at references to poetry in the book.
I mention how much I loved Edna St. Vincent Millay poetry when I was young. This poem, which she wrote when she was nineteen years old, I listened to over and over again on an LP album.
“Renascence” is a dramatic poem, perfect for reading aloud, much different from the short and pithy Emily Dickinson poems I also read in my late teens. Here is one I remember reading in high school lying on my bed:
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
I also mention Omar Khayyam, not for his poetry, which I didn’t know at that age, but because I knew of him and his Rubaiyat and ate dinner at a restaurant named after the poet. Khayyam was a Persian poet who lived one thousand years ago.
Most significantly in Scrap is a reference to Anne Sexton and “The Starry Night.” Here is the poem:
The Starry Night
“That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother
