The terrorists had launched an attack on American soil. Hundreds of local students, from every creed and race, gathered in the small auditorium to cope with the sting of loss. They stared at the stage, mesmerized by the voice of a Jewish rabbi. A Hebrew hymn floated through the audience, reminding everyone of their grief, returning everyone to that day in September. They remembered the planes, explosions, and fallen debris. They remembered the ripped steel, which spread across the fabric of our illusions, brining the symbol of American capitalism crashing down to the streets of New York.
     The religious speakers, ranging from an Islamic professor to a Native-American elder, spoke the wisdom of ages, the recurring themes of faith and suffering that have troubled generations. For this one afternoon, they set aside their differences. They shared proverbs, tribal chants, and passages from their scriptures. They reached out to students, connected to them by invisible bonds of grief. At Minnesota State University Moorhead, a small campus located on the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, many of these students experienced the power of poetry.

     Humans are social creatures. In moments of happiness and sadness, they search for others with the same emotions. Some people consider poetry an outdated form of expression. But poets are our storytellers, our chroniclers, those that freeze time and chance. They describe human events with a fresh perspective. They see through the junk language, the bombardment of commercial entertainment that characterizes the information age. Through the use of hymns, songs, stories, and verses, they capture outbursts of feeling and present them to the world.
     People have a tendency to stereotype poetry. Images emerge, in flashes, after a high school English class. A cranky woman, often with graying brown hair, scribbled rhyming patterns on the blackboard. She forced students to memorize the formal vocabulary words: stanza, iambic pentameter, and hyperbole. A limited selection of poetry followed, starting with the Renaissance masters, moving on to the Romantics, and ending with T.S. Eliot. Most people have learned to associate poems with archaic diction, rhyme schemes, and obscure metaphors. They miss the poetry dancing through their everyday lives.
     Poetry extends above and beyond the Western Canon. “Most people don’t realize what is available,” said Elizabeth Severn, an English professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead. “They think poetry has to be a certain way. They are rules to the craft, but there are so many poets that go around those rules.” Poetry stretches from the demanding and structured language of Milton, to the chaotic and carefree words of William Carlos Williams: