September 29, 2009
Author Kathy Welton, Guest Blogger
Posted by rhdave under Guest Bloggers | Tags:
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Poetry + Libraries = Transformation
by Kathy Welton, author of Poetry for Beginners (Steerforth, coming Jan. 2010)
In a recent New York Times article, Harold Bloom, professor of English at Yale advocates getting lost in books:
“More than ever in this time of economic troubles and societal change, entering upon an undergraduate education should be a voyage away from visual overstimulation into deep, sustained reading of what is most worth absorbing and understanding: the books that survive all ideological fashions.
There is general agreement on the indispensable canon: Homer, Plato, the Bible, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Milton. From the 19th century until now, keeping only to English and American authors, a slightly more arbitrary selection might include Blake, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Yeats and Joyce in England and Ireland. Among the Americans would certainly be Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Hawthorne; and in the 20th century, Faulkner and the major poets: Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane.”
One doesn’t necessarily need to be in school to get lost in books–or in poetry.
My fondest memories are of holding a book in my hands at a very early age. We were very lucky as a family to have both a prized library set of the Harvard Classics and an entire encyclopedia set in our house. Books that I could treasure, look at, and read while I was growing up.
Lucky indeed.
In addition, I was greatly influenced by my English teachers. I remember having to recite “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe in the fifth grade. And I am especially grateful to Diane Middlebrook, a poet and English teacher at Stanford University who showed her students how to transform and transcend destiny. I will always remember her poetry classes—and a special class when she read a favorite poem with Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” playing in the background.
So this was poetry!
These experiences with books and poetry greatly shaped my career, life, and who I am today.
I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with words and the world of books and be a part of the book publishing community for over 30 years. Working with authors, bookstores, and librarians has always been an essential way for me to get by and to get lost in books.
Working on a book in the For Beginners® series has been another enjoyable opportunity and experience for me. I liked the documentary, graphic, straightforward, and accessible (more…)



Confessions of a Library Boy