Great story about the S & G song. When I was in my first year in college in Massachusetts, in the spring of 1963, my wonderful English teacher, Naomi Diamond -- whom I discovered 25 years later teaching at Ryerson, and found out then that she was Canadian, gave us this assignment: walk around the college lake, Lake Waban (about a 2 hour walk) and memorize this 8-line poem by Robert Frost: Nature's first green is gold/Her hardest hue to hold/Her early leaf's a flower/But only so an hour./Then leaf subsides to leaf/So Eden came to grief/So dawn comes down to day/Nothing gold can stay. " I know the poem by heart, lo these many years later (I may have got a couple of words wrong). And I was one of the few people who actually completed the walk around the lake, seeing what Frost meant by the leaves looking like flowers -- and feeling the humus and old leaves underfoot, hearing birds, etc. I had grown up in the city and didn't know much about this. i think the experience not only taught me about truly learning a poem by heart (not just "memorizing") but also how poetry does connect to nature. Like Helen Keller learning that the letters "w-a-t-e-r" spelled into her hand meant the water she was feeling -- but in reverse: the nature really "was" in the words. And "subsides" is so lovely -- I used it years later in a poem about my mother, that also brought in birds in the garden.

another comment by Ellen -- When I met her again in the late 1980's, Miss Diamond was giving reading groups for writers in her home, and I attended several sessions of these groups. It was then that I realised she not only had a fine, brilliant mind, but also was extremely compassionate and caring. (although she did not suffer fools gladly). As another one of her students said in her obituary, she loved words and saw literature as a way to help people empathize with each other in life.

If you think murdering your boss (literally or figuartively) is the way to get ahead -- choose MacBeth If your wife (or husband) is pressuring you to murder the boss -- choose MacBeth If you are hearing the voices of witches on the heath making great promises to you -- choose MacBeth (and know there is a price to pay for those promises coming true).

If you enjoy fantasy, choose Midsummer Night's Dream. If you enjoy history, Henry IV Parts I & II

I agree with starting in the theatre -- either by going to see a play or by acting in one. We did Twelfth Night in high school and it remains one of my favourite plays. And of course The Tempest is always good.