First Day Of Spring Semester

 Today my classes started at Senior U at University of Minnesota in Duluth. I had a poetry class that started at 9. Since the sidewalks are treacherous and the roads are narrow with ice and snow I decided to take the city bus to campus. For 6 quarters I got a ride to the student center. In the morning I was half of the passengers on the bus. One the ride home a little after 11 a.m., I was the solo passenger. I could get used to this luxury. My teacher of poetry still teaches at Saint Scholastica. He teaches religious studies and philosophy. Although he has never taken a class in poetry, he has published several books of poetry and still enjoys teaching poetry. He talked about rhyming. Certain poets had certain formulas for the rhyming. Emily Dickenson, one of my favorite poets, had an interesting pattern. Shakespeare had another pattern. Robert Frost had some very complicated patterns. Some poets have emphasis on the first words, some had emphasis on every third word. Some words are considered female. Female words are compound words or words that only the second half of the work rhymes. Male words are single words. Our teacher read each poem aloud focusing on the patterns he found. Maya Angelou was another great poet because her words are so evocative. Now days free style poetry is the most common. The teacher said free style poetry is the most difficult to read. Aloud, I said, "Thank you," because I find modern poetry hard to read. I mention Dr. Suess. Dr. Suess kept the same pattern in his poetry in all his books. Sometimes he made up words to fit in the poems. The pattern is so predictable that his books often puts children to sleep. Way back in  December I read an article about resolutions. One resolution suggestion for the New Year was to write a haiku every day. Since January 1st I have written a haiku every day. This practice takes less than 3 minutes. I can't say that any of the haikus are any good but when I read back on them I can picture the kind of day I was having quite vividly. I enjoyed being on campus today if only for a little while.