"A New Poet" by Linda Pastan

Last night at Jesse Auditorium on MU’s campus Dr. Maya Angelou said, “It’s imperative we have poetry because poetry reminds you there was someone before you. It reminds you we are all human and no one can be more human than you.”

Not every poet is for you. Not every poem means or will mean something to you, but if you don’t listen to me, listen to Maya Angelou and believe that the most important thing you might do today is find a poem that does.

A New Poet
by Linda Pastan

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.

Found at: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/090.html