BurlHorniachek

You know, I had very little experience with American poetry either through the BC public school system or my time at UBC. A bit of Dickinson, maybe one poem by Whitman, a number of Frost poems, and a smattering of Harlem Renaissance figures (I'm still a fan of Claude McKay). The only way I started to break into it beyond that was second order exposure through other figures who talked about American poets. I had never, academically, been pushed towards Emerson until I read Nietzsche and found that Emerson was one of the few figures Nietzsche had positive things to say about - so I found a collection of his works. It was exceptional in wit and character and sneaking depth into it. Now, decades later, I ask my nieces and nephews about what works they're studying in school. I've never heard any American poet mentioned other than Robert Frost. Their exposure to poetry is pretty limited though, and whatever their teachers are doing with it leaves them utterly unenthusiastic. Anyway, with that long preamble is all to say that our Canadian system is - at least in my experience - pretty bad at getting children into this sort of thing, or even giving them an idea of what's out there. I swear, my own poetic reading has picked up a lot because I have kids - but the academic systems I've been involved with haven't done a great job of broadening horizons.