Poems or presidents, it’s tough picking a favorite

The other day, somebody asked me a tough one.

To name my favorite poem.

It was local attorney Ronald Self inviting me to join a group of folks commemorating National Poetry Month by reading favorite poems.

Sure thing, I said. But then I had to choose one, and I was stumped.

Maybe that’s a sign that I’m an English major.

Ask an English major for a single favorite work and you’ll probably get a list instead.

My list of poems starts with “I Heard a Fly Buzz — When I Died,” by Emily Dickinson, which I first read when I was 18 years old and thought was hilarious. Maybe that was because my freshman dorm’s intramural flag football team was called the Buzzkills.

I’d like to believe my reasoning would be more sophisticated than that, but I did create the artwork for our team T-shirt, which featured a drawing of a guy named Phoebus who flunked first semester with a GPA of 0.06.

But I digress.

I’d also go with “Once by the Pacific” by Robert Frost, which starts like this: “The shattered water made a misty din./Great waves looked over others coming in,/And thought of doing something to the shore,/That water never did to land before.”

That’s pretty awesome, but choosing Frost is pretty unoriginal.

A truly original choice would be James Still, who was born in 1906 in my hometown of LaFayette, Ala., and moved to Kentucky as a young man. He was a great collector of Appalachian yarns and wrote a touching poem called, “Those I Want in Heaven With Me (Should There Be Such a Place).”

We corresponded for several years and I received an invitation to his 90th birthday party from one of his friends. “No gifts,” it said. “He don’t need nuthin’.”

I decided I didn’t have time to make the 500-mile drive. He died several years later. Not meeting James Still remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

An inspired choice of poetry, to be sure.

When I think about it, though, it’s probably tough for anybody to pick a favorite anything. That’s because you’re making a statement about yourself.

The other day, I asked a friend to name his favorite TV show. I knew for a fact that he’d watched all 13 episodes of Season 4 of “House of Cards” in a single weekend, and that if 13 more episodes came out every weekend, he’d never leave the house.

He listed several shows, but “House of Cards” wasn’t one of them.

Why didn’t it make his list?

“Too trashy,” he said.

The same thing happens when you ask somebody you know is going to vote for Donald Trump who he’s going to vote for.

He says, “I don’t know. I mean, I do agree with some things Trump says.”

These days, it’s refreshing when people know what they like and aren’t afraid to admit it.

Take my 13-year-old son, Joe. Ask him his favorite vegetable and he won’t pause for a second: “Macaroni and cheese!”

You may believe mac & cheese is not a vegetable — you would be wrong — but you’re not going to fault somebody for loving it because you probably love it yourself.

But back to favorite poems.

The National Poetry Month reading is at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Columbus Public Library auditorium. Readers include Cameron Bean, Jimmy Elder, Laura Lowe, Kayron Laska, Roy Plummer, Marquette McKnight, Mike Venable, Scott Ferguson, Michael Silverstein and Henry McCoy.

I think I’m going with something by Wendell Berry.

Quick, what’s your favorite poem?

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 7:59 PM with the headline "Poems or presidents, it’s tough picking a favorite."