National Poetry Month: This library quenches the thirst for verse

From Hiram Sims’ earliest memory, poetry defined his inner world – songs of praise at his church choir; the rap lyrics of The Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy, and Mase’s “Mo Money Mo Problems”; Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in seventh grade.

“Poetry’s like a frequency that I can hear above all other frequencies,” he says. “It’s like a dog whistle; you know, like other people, they just walk right past it. They can’t even hear it. But when I hear that sound, I pay attention.”

That sound became his favorite form of expression. As a kid, he wrote about candy, his thoughts about God, and a lot of verses for girls at school. In college, while he progressed to mature writing around the Black experience in America and the