Why I Love Poetry

I love poetry. I love poetry so much that I married a poet. Writing a good poem (to paraphrase T.S. Eliot) is like scrunching the world into a little ball and throwing it at the reader. I used to write poetry myself but my wife writes so much better. So I stick to children’s books. And have occasionally translated the poems of prominent Israeli poets into English.

In my final year of high school (grade 13, I know, weird, but true) we had an incredible English teacher, Mr. E.W. Benoit. We were a class of science nerds but he promised to get us to love literature. And he did. We learned four Shakespearean tragedies in the first three months of the year. I can can remember entire passages from King Lear.

I sold most of my high school books, but kept the book of poetry we learned that year. It had an article entitled, “How Does a Poem Mean.” And many classic poems that I read over and over. T.S. Eliot might have been an anti-semite, but boy could he write!

Oh, and somewhere in the book (published in 1964!) there was a poem of a young, promising Canadian writer named Leonard Cohen.

But, looking back, my love for poetry goes back even further, to grade seven. That’s when I fell in love with many poets, but in particular Lewis Carroll and all his nonsense.

And it was all because of the contest of Mrs. Parkinson.

Mrs. Parkinson was our teacher in six and seventh grade. I can’t remember what she looked like, and can’t find her on the internet. She might have been nondescript. But she changed my life.

In 1962 she announced a poetry competition. Whoever could memorize the most lines of poetry during the school year would win the class award.

I got at it with a vengeance. I was a real wuss as a kid. I envied Miriam Eve Shnitzer and Diane Kriger who outperformed me in most subjects. Here was an opportunity to shine. I started to memorize oodles of poems. During recess we would recite the poems to Mrs. Parkinson and she would keep score.

The scores were not published till the end of the year. Another pupil, Ira Greenblatt would ask me, “How many lines have your memorized so far?” If I told him, “Over two hundred,” he would retort, “I’ve learned over four hundred myself.”

So instead of playing catch at recess,  I played catch up with Ira Greenblatt. Would this kid beat me to the coveted award? I memorized poem after poem. I still remember my favorites: the Walrus and the Carpenter, Father Williams, and the beamish Jabberwocky.

At the end of the year Mrs. Parkinson announced the winner. It was me, with 914 lines of memorized poetry. Ira Greenblatt had learned the requisite 200 lines or so.

He had been pulling my leg all year. I spoke to him last year and thanked him for it! I’m not sure he remembered, but he was very kind about it.

Yesterday, I found my seventh grade report card. Mrs. Parkinson wrote, “Melvyn has learned more memory work than any other pupil. 914 lines – 200 required.

“However he neglected the required reading some months.”

Gee, sorry about that, Mrs. Parkinson. We’ll always have the poetry, though.

I don’t remember whether there was a class award , but I had fallen in love with poems. And it has stuck ever since.

Here is another account of the story. Pretty similar, after 60 years.

Thinking back, though, I did receive a prize of sorts. My Dad bought me a book of Ogden Nash’s poems. Some might say, “oh, such nonsense,” but I will say, “Yes, indeed. Great nonsense.”

And yes, Dad did write and even publish a few poems of his own during engineering school. We grew up on one, entitled “Chicken Sandwich, fifteen cents”.

Chicken Sandwich: 25 Cents

Harry Benjamin Rosenberg

He grabbed my leg
I tried to beg my life from him
He axed my head
My neck it bled too much for me
T’was then I knew
That I’d cost you
25 cents

-transcribed from memory by my sister Miriam Duanis