Before printed material became mass produced, information, stories and poems were passed through memorization and recitation from person-to-person. While I am lucky enough to have polished my memorization skills through years of theatre and voice, I am also someone who struggles remembering the five things I need to pick up at the grocery store. Memorization of anything is so rarely required in our day-to-day lives anymore beyond a one-time school assignment or large scale presentations.

As much as I wanted to highlight another poet for National Poetry Month, Mary Oliver will always be my go-to. I've read many books of poetry but none have captured me like Oliver's works. It saddens me that we will not have any new works to read of hers, but I am also so grateful to have access to her works. Every time I encounter one of her collections here at the library, I sigh a deep sigh of longing; I want to lock myself away in Mary's world and never surface. She has such a sweet and gentle way of drawing you into her wo

One of my favorite lines in all of poetry comes from Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” which defines true wit as “what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”

These nine words seem, to me, the perfect definition of an autological statement: they express the property that they also possess. They are about truth and they ring true.