Information Woman!: April is Poetry Month: Day 6

I love "serendipity"; both the sound of the word, with its multiple syllables hopping around on your tongue, and the meaning of the word: "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way." I consider problem-solving to be a core function of living and a slant towards seeing the serendipitous elements of life is useful and fun.

My friend' Sharon's father, Richard, told me about a neighbor of his who, in the style of Red Green, could always concoct a device to accomplish a task that needed doing. There might be a conventional tool to do the job, but why spend money when you could put together what you had laying around the farm and get the job done? Richard had adopted that philosophy himself and showed me one of his jerry-rigged tools that he called a "Gordon" in honor of his thrifty and clever neighbor. Now "Gordon," whom I've never met, has become my patron saint of serendipity and his mantra is: everything you need will come to you at the perfect time. (As long as you have your eyes open to possibility!)

Closely related to serendipity is "synchronicity" which means "the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection." Both of these are variants of "coincidence" and whether or not they can be explained they add mystery and flavor to life and I enjoy seeing them pop up in my life and telling their stories. I keep a notebook labeled "Synchronicity" to record just those moments.

On day 4 when I wrote about Kenneth Koch's book, Talking to the Sun, I didn't expect him to show up again so soon in one of my books. It's not a wild coincidence to find a modern poet in more than one poetry book, of course; but Kenneth Koch is not exactly a household name. I might not pause for a second to find another poem by Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, even your most non-literary acquaintance probably recognizes those names, but you have to be a little more geeky to recognize Koch. But here he is, in this rather unique volume.

Let's put together a classroom of school kids, a worthy cause, a proactive teacher, a cadre of notable people and two simple but profound questions: What is your favorite poem and why did you chose it? The result is Poems for Life assembled by Class V at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York in 1995. Anna Quindlen provided the introduction and 49 other writers, actors, politicians and journalists answered the call. Among those people was Koch (pronounced "coke") who shared a poem that was written by a fifth grader, as well as an explanatory letter to the student who elicited his response.

Dear Adie Ellis,

I don't really have one Favorite Poem but quite a lot of favorite poems. Some poems seem so good that there couldn't possibly be any poem better, and then one goes on reading and finds another poem one likes just as well. I think if I started listing my favorite poems, it might fill up your whole boo--there would be poems by Shakespeare, John Dunne, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Frank O'Hara, and a lot more. Also among my favorite poems are some written by the students I had when I was teaching schoolchildren to write poetry, like this one by Jeff Morley. He was in the fifth grade at Public School 61 in New York when he wrote it, I think in 1968. I had asked my students to write poems that were completely untrue--what I called "Lie Poems." Some children wrote lists of funny, crazy things like "I was born on a blackboard," "I fly to school at 12:00 midnight," or "I am in New York on a flying blueberry"--but Jeff wrote about just one strange, and obviously untrue, experience. There was something about it that seemed true, though--