The Power of Poetry

Brod Bagert at Lafayette 3/29/11

Brod Bagert believes in the power of poetry.  He believes in the power of the rhythm and the rhyme, the strength of the sound and the voice of a poem.  He believes that if we find one poem that we love, we will be well on our way to understanding the power of poetry.  So let's find a poem that speaks to us in some way: a poem that entertains us, that makes us laugh, that makes us stop and think, that allows us to remember, that inspires us to act.  Today's first poem encourages us to follow the Dewey Decimal signs to 811.  We never know what we'll find there:

The Buffalo in the Library

At school, in the library,

In section eight-one-one,

I saw a big brown buffalo

Who was having lots of fun.

His nose was in a book of poems

About trees and grass and birds,

But that buffalo wasn't reading,

He was eating up the words.

I like you, Mr. Buffalo,

And I know you have to feed,

But please don't eat my poetry books.

I need those books to read.

I'll take you to the playground

And give you grass instead,

But poetry is the food I need

To feed my hungry head.

--Brod Bagert

The Buffalo in the Library is a poem to love.  Our next poem, Buffalo Dusk, was written by Carl Sandburg in 1848.   A well-known American writer who celebrated the power of poetry and the spirit of America, Sandburg  wrote about famous Americans, common hard-working Americans, and the beautiful American landscape.   Carl Sandburg worked on his biography of Abraham Lincoln  for thirty years; the finished work filled six thick books. Mr. Sandburg would have done a very thorough job on his Wax Museum and Biography Banner projects!

Buffalo Dusk

The buffaloes are gone.

And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and

          how they pawed the prairie sod into dust

          with their hoofs, their great heads down

          pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And the buffaloes are gone.

--Carl Sandburg

Two Yellowstone bison

The poem's speaker remembers wild buffalo that once roamed freely on our nation's frontier:  great herds hunted to near extinction during the nineteenth century, who live now only in memory.  Today, the descendants of Buffalo Dusk herds graze on farms, preserves, and national parkland. As Poetry on Parade marches on, we learn that a poem has the power to entertain us and to make us laugh: it also has the power to make us think, to allow us to remember, and to inspire us to action.  Buffalo Dusk is a poem to love.