Poetry Anyone?

I usually don't put much faith in "signs". You know, looking for guidance in the form of hints from above/below/or beyond. However, when I stumble across two references to the importance of poetry in less than 24 hours - well you gotta stop and take notice.

Yesterday I came upon Scrolling Forward, Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age by David M. Levy.

For Levy, documents-from cash register receipts to children's notes, greeting cards, and web pages-are "things we have imbued with the ability to speak." While each kind of document operates within its own limited niche, collectively they work to provide some measure of stable ground in an unstable world.

I starting reading Levy's chapter on Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", and remembered I had purchased a book of Whitman's poetry years ago. It inspired me to go find it - - haven't located it yet. (Hope I didn't give it away - I do things like that.)

Today, one of my favorite blogs, About Last Night, has a piece on the benefits of good, old-fashioned rote memorization of poetry. I have taken these two "hints" as a sign that I should memorize a poem. Wish me luck!