Under the Light...

It's about 8:30 on a cold Saturday morning and I am surfing around looking for a blog topic. I tried "Word of the Day." There were some interesting ones, if you take a look at the words around today's word as well - peripatetic and mellifluous are two, I could work with. However, I also like to have a picture to go with the blog and nothing came to mind to go with either word.

Then I went to "Event of the Day" and the only event I bothered to remember was that on this day in 1859 the French Government  - passed a law to set the A-note above middle C to a frequency of 435 Hz, in an attempt to standardize the pitch. I don't know enough about music to write at length about sound frequencies - other frequencies maybe :) I was surprised, though that it required a law. I thought that the musical scale just "happened" like flowers. I guess not.  It makes you wonder what music was like before 1859.

Me somewhere - maybe Britain

Next, I went to "Quote of the Day" and found the usual inspirational quotation, of which I receive several hundred a day posted to my FB wall. Finally I went to "Poem of the Day" and spent about an hour on a favourite site - Poetry 180 and decided to use the first of the 180 poems listed, as a blog topic. It's by Billy Collins and says a lot about how we should approach poetry.

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

"Tyger Tyger burning bright..."

My pictures were suggested by the first few lines of the poem. They are slides from a time - long ago and far away, when I used to teach poetry in high school. I held them up to the light!!

Have an inspired day!!