What if through public address systems across America, high school students heard:

"Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee

Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names..."*

Such is the dream becoming reality of US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who has launched a website Poetry 180, which offers teachers an American poem for every school day of the year to read aloud. The project seems suited to the teenaged tempest within, and the poems range from the sweetly domestic, the playful, the historic, to the tormented and tough.

To peruse the poems yourself see: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180

What would an SBL Poetry 180 look like we wonder?



*Poetry excerpt is from Yves Bonnefoy's, "Passer-by these are words..."

Citation: , " Poetry 180 Website," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited April 2005]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=74