Poetry

"Young People's Poetry Week," sponsored by the Children's Book Council, will be observed this week (tomorrow through April 18) to encourage children and young adults to read, write and enjoy poetry. Poetry creates pictures in children's minds and develops their imagination. And, poems are often short with lots of white space on the page, which makes them more accessible to new readers.Here are some tips for sharing poetry with your child:n Read a poem slowly and be dramatic (in other words, ham it up)

Gilbert Valliant Byron, who wrote about the Chesapeake Bay for nearly half a century from a simple cabin he built on a cove in the woods near St. Michaels, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at age 87, still hoping to publish a fourth novel.The Eastern Shoreman, whose life appeared styled after Henry David Thoreau, became one of the bay's most prolific and well-known authors. He wrote 11 published books, including seven books of poetry and three novels. His best-known book was "The Lord's Oysters" and his most recent novel, "Done Crabbin'," was published in 1990 by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

From geography bees to science competitions, young people across the country face off in all sorts of academic contests. The nation's top spellers have been featured on ESPN and in a hit movie. So why not a "poetry bee"? The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation is working with the National Endowment for the Arts on pilot programs in high schools there and in the Washington, D.C., area that could lead to a national student poetry recitation contest. Students in a West Side Chicago high school have begun organizing the first such event, scheduled for April 11 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Washington--Like many people who have not been back home in some time, Adrienne Rich is approaching her return to Baltimore this weekend with a mixture of anticipation and curiosity. The trips to Lexington Market, eating crab cakes -- these are things she hopes are still as delightful as they were during a comfortable childhood in North Baltimore in the 1930s and '40s.But there are other things she remembers less fondly -- the racism, the homophobia, the closed social system that included well-bred gentiles and few others.

Looking over a mountain of poetry books published in 1999, I'm struck by the relevance of one that came out in 1798: "The Lyrical Ballads," by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordworth's introduction -- in its time truly revolutionary -- boils down to this: poems should surprise readers out of their complacency, speak "ordinary language" and stay away from cliches. Wordsworth provides a handy three-prong tool for digging through the mountain.* Surprising the reader: Let's start with non-complacency.

Ever wonder how it would sound if a painter played the cello? What it would look like if a novelist could sculpt? Now you have a chance to see -- and hear -- one artist's vision in two media: printmaking and poetry. Prints made by former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand will be on display Saturday through Oct. 21 at the Goya-Girl Press at Baltimore's Mill Center. The poet will also read some of his latest literary works at an opening reception to be held Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (The reading will begin at 6:30 p.m.)

"Life," a friend once said, "is just so damn daily." Readers of fiction get to escape their dailiness by spending a few hours living other people's lives. Shouldn't readers of poetry have the same privilege? Bored with the East Coast WASPish academic grayness of my own life, I rummaged through several hundred new books of poetry seeking color. I wanted poems that would propel me out of myself and breathe new romance into my long love affair with the English language. I found myself drawn to poets with non-Anglo names and poets whose back-cover photos suggested complex bloodlines.

There is no defense for excluding other seasons, but this is the time of year in which I most think of reading aloud - the joys that offers the reader and the read-to alike, the discoveries, the intensity, the connections of mind and heart that can enrich all involved.That, in turn, brings up poetry. People read poetry for many reasons. It is easy to forget that the most potent original and continuing element of poetry is how it sounds. What's the music of poetry when you read it silently?

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Unlike the one preceding, our century has not been a formal one. Especially for the last 40 years, informality has been its guiding principle.Like our president, many of us -- I certainly include myself -- learned in youth to be suspicious of handed-down rules, customs, traditions and rituals. They weren't good enough for our generation, so we demanded new ones, and expressed our independence in our clothes, our speech, our preferences in art and music, and of course in our politics.

Sondra Zeidenstein describes herself as a gardener who can't get enough of flowers. Flowers grace her desk, her table, her kitchen counter. A summer's day finds her sweeping trails of pollen dust and petals. She has studied flowers through her magnifying glass. She has sketched them, although she says she has no flair for drawing. She has read and even written poems about flowers.So when Ms. Zeidenstein went through what she calls ''a season loss, with parents, uncles, aunts dying in quick succession, a generation coming to a close,'' she decided to collect poems about flowers and put them into a book.