It’s mid-July. A lot of people are on vacation. Going to work can feel like you’re in a barren wasteland of tumbleweeds. But this Wednesday, you don’t have to battle it out alone with the freezing office AC–it’s Take Your Poet to Work Day! Cut out a picture of your favorite poet, decorate him/her, attach it to a popsicle stick, and take your poet-puppet to work.
My work poet has to be T.S. Eliot:
Whenever I’m shuffling on public transportation with a lot of other commuters, I think about The Waste Land. Particularly:
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
If anyone understands how necessary that extra cup of coffee is, it’s Eliot. My suggestions for Take Your Poet to Work Day activities:
- Write haiku about your favorite office supplies.
- Print out sonnets and put them in random mailboxes.
- Instead of listening to streaming radio, crank up your favorite poetry reading recordings.
- Take meeting notes in iambic pentameter.
- Have fun with your punctuation, ala e.e. cummings.
Share your ideas for Take Your Poet to Work Day in the comments.
(H/T bookshelves of doom)
