Letter from John Keohane

To the Editor:
My brother and I were taking the subway to Revolutionary patriot Paul Revere’s house in Boston. As we got on, there were the first four lines of the Longfellow poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” I said those lines and then kept going. It’s a long poem, and I’ve learned it all.
My brother was impressed.
Now is the time to learn poetry. When you know it, you own it. You can be put in isolation with
COVID-19, or in a chair with a dentist doing something in your mouth. One time, in a dental chair, I silently said five verses of “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” If you’re in isolation for COVID-19, you might have the advantage of being able to speak.
Want to learn poetry? What I do is get on the internet, find the poetry, and print it off. That’s the high-tech part. One can always push the paper into your pocket. You can be anywhere waiting for someone or something and learn poetry. For me that’s already included “Midnight . . .”, “Charge . . .”, five poems by Carl Sandburg, three by Robert Frost, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.
You can do it in Missouri. I do it here in Texas.
John Keohane,
Austin, Texas
P.S. I subscribe to and enjoy your newspaper.