Accessible Poetry- A page on Facebook

Happy 2015 to all of you here! This new year I hope to cultivate/ gain some readers of English poetry.

A poem is the invited guest of its reader. As readers we open the door of the book or magazine, look into the face of the poem, and decide whether or not to invite it into our lives. .Because most of our early experience with poems happened in classrooms where we had to try to make sense of a poem, we've gotten the impression that people are going to sit still for a half hour sweating over the poems we write, trying to understand and enjoy them. Not so! In the real world, people know they don't have to understand the hidden meaning of your poem to pass eighth-grade English. They passed eighth-grade English years ago. If your poem doesn't grab them at once, they're turning the page. - Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States.