If you're in the neighborhood, stop by the Huntingdon Valley, PA Library at 625 Red Lion Road off Huntingdon Pike (Route 232) to see the Display Case we installed for April is National Poetry Month.
Tiffany and I worked over 4 hours designing what to put on the 3 shelves to make it as eye-catching as possible. It's on the Left as soon as you enter the library.
There's poems by 2 of our members - the prolific Linda and myself. There are also several books by Pennsylvania poets no one has ever heard of. It's important to buy books of local poets to support their efforts. Our Linda, in fact, wrote a book w/the catchy title of "Scratch Paper Poems" which Tiffany purchased from her.
Tiffany brought in seashells, shiny rocks, necklaces and earrings which served as colorful accents in the artistic looking case. We collaborated well together, standing far back of the case to envision how things looked up close. At the end, I wanted to fill in some empty spots, so I went outdoors and found a few pine cones on the grounds to fill out the design. My hands got sticky from the sap!
In addition to the poetry, we put up a note inside the case saying, Did you know that many poets suffer from "the artist's condition" - or bipolar disorder (manic depression)? We named a few poets - Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sara Teasdale - and then tacked up a New Directions brochure and invited people to call us if interested in joining our group.
The library director, Thais (pronounced Tie-eece) Gardy, made a big fuss over the case and said it looked like it had been done by professionals!
Linda, who loves giving gifts, gave me a little diary. For the display case, I hand-wrote a small poem I found that very morning in one of my huge stacks of papers which lines the floor around my desk:
BALLET
The nightly moth
reminds me of
my aloneness
banging for
attention.
How to love a moth?
Stare hard.
