I never used to get all that poetry stuff...I was an English major with a dirty little secret: I hated poetry. I hadn't read one since college. It was only recently when I had to teach poetry in one of my classes, that I actually read a poem again. I was feeling like a total hypocrite up there trying to convince a classroom of Comp I students that poetry was a worthy pursuit. They were whining, "Why do we have to learn this stuff? I'm not going to have to use it when I am an auto mechanic." (Remember these are not English majors, and I am not at an Ivy league school.) I was frantically searching for an answer beyond, "It's good for you." As I desperately wroung the depths of my soul for justification of its worthiness, I was silently, whole heartedly-agreeing with every word they were saying--- I literally had never used any of my grand knowedge of poetry until that very moment -- and I was an English major. Our time was probably much more practically spent learning the difference between a run-on and a complete sentence, or better yet, that capital letters have a purpose in written communication and that "you" is not spelled "u" for a good reason. But we trudged on, and I prayed they wouldn't discover my charade. . . and then. . .
I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leav’d, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems . . .
. . .So I straightaway began to pluck a posey . . .
. . . Was a poet born?
I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
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