Poetry: Priceless.

April is National Poetry Month, and in its honor, I’d like to share some thoughts on the topic.

At the close of the Civil War, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois argued its importance. Washington felt it (I paraphrase) a luxury, as it could not feed the body, and DuBois felt it gave the soul the reason for feeding the body.

Long treatises have been written about the form and function and nature of poetry. Edgar Allen Poe felt that the most poignant poetic subject was the death of a beautiful young woman, as told by her bereaved lover.

The romantics thought poetry expressed man’s essential imaginations, capturing truth at its purest level. Shelley, in his essay “Defense of Poetry,” contrasts poetry to narrative, where time, he says, distorts things and makes them ugly. Poetry, on the other hand, "is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

Poetry was, in many ways, born of practicality. Before the invention of the printing press, poetry was the news and entertainment of its time. Its rhyme and repetition were mnemonic devices that let people memorize and recite its stories, its truths, its expressions. The greatest and oldest works of literature--Beowulf, the Iliad, much of the Bible--are in verse forms.

The word itself derives from an ancient Greek word meaning “I create.” Thus a poet is a creator--the poem, the creation.

In the 21st century, poetry seems to have become superfluous, an unnecessary adornment, the latest advertising jingle.

Has “creation” thus fallen by the wayside? And with it beauty--even truth?

Poetry, no matter its form, or its function, exerts an undeniable power on those who experience it. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself: What is this little ditty I can’t get out of my head?

Southwest Michigan has Jumped the Shark.

After twenty one years of living happyily in southwest Michigan, I am afraid to say, it has, at last, "jumped the shark."

This saying references the infamous shark-jump executed, on waterskis, and in leather jacket and trunks, by “the Fonz” on the TV show Happy Days. The show's ratings declined after the stunt, resulting in its eventual cancellation. The phrase has been coined to mean that “over the top,” moment, where the tide turns, and the once popular begins its fade into oblivion. Southwest Michigan has reached this point.

What makes the region so special, so sought after, so popular with visitors and residents alike--the beaches and the farm belt--have become such a hodge podge of commercial developments, private enterprises, and homes that they are no longer enjoyable, nor, sometimes, even accessible.

Lack of cohesive planning has left the lake front a busy mix of styles, shapes, and sizes. Garish signs block what little scenic view is left, and lack of parking discourages visitation.

The wide open spaces so recently occupied by quiet farmland have suffered similar fates. Clusters of vinyl sided boxes sit where grains once waved and apple trees blossomed. Meanwhile, once charming older neighborhoods dissolve into dilapidated decay.

Area leaders, so thirsty for the almighty dollar, have sold the citizens of southwest Michigan out, stumbling over themselves and each other to “top” the last development, attraction, corporate tax break. Well, you can’t top sand dunes and fresh peaches. The leaders of this community have caused it to “jump the shark,” leaving the midwestern West Coast a mere facsimile of what it once was, what it could have been, and, presumably, what they wanted it to be.