'Morning Edition' Listeners Wax Poetic

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now April is national poetry month and we wanted to hear from the poets among you, our listeners. Here's what we did. We asked people to go to our Facebook page, not to write poems exactly, but to wax poetic.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We wanted to hear about your favorite block, whether it's where you live or somewhere you just stopped by once and never forgot. Now we have some of the responses.

KELLY CONROY: My favorite block is the one I lived on land I was 20 years old, studying abroad in Barcelona.

GREENE: Here's why Kelly Conroy, now at Western Kentucky University, remembers that block in Barcelona.

CONROY: I loved the sycamores, the unique sidewalk paving tiles and the shape of the blocks themselves - octagons, and the mix of Spanish and Catalan and other languages. Even the Spanish word for block, manzana or apple, is poetic.

GREENE: I kind of want to go there right now. That's just one of the descriptions we received about people's favorite blocks. Others recalled riding a bike in the Bronx or visiting an old haunted mansion in Santiago, Chile.

INSKEEP: Writer Aaron Stuvie told us about the block where he grew up in Davenport, Iowa, especially a particular corner. When his friends said the corner, they all knew which one.

AARON STUVIE: We congregated there. We partied there. We spent the night there. To an outsider, it may have seen like nothing more than the house on the corner where the street rat kids hung out. To all of us street rat kids it was our home. The white house, the side yard, the inviting parents, the cool basement, the little brother who did what ever we told him to, it had everything.

GREENE: From Mary Lou Lee, the block that had everything was on Seventh Avenue in Tuscaloosa where grandparents lived. She even got a little misty talking about it.

MARYLU LEE: I remember sultry Alabama days and nights, waking up in an old iron bed with crisp white sheets dried in the sunshine; spending evenings listening to the old Southern stories from my rarely seen relatives, while rocking in the old chairs or swinging on the porch swing.

INSKEEP: Wow, break out the Faulkner. Thanks to all the poetic language we received at MORNING EDITION's Facebook page.

GREENE: Poetry month is just getting started and so are we. Post a recollection of your favorite block to our Facebook page. Tweet us @morningedition or e-mail morningedition@npr.org.

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene

INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.

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