Sadly, today is the last day of National Poetry Month. Joyfully, I was able to post almost every day (although there were a few blips along the way). I urge you to explore more, discover more, enjoy more poetry... whether it's haiku, free verse, sonnets, cinquains, villanelles, sestinas. Find what you like, and then read more of it. Don't make it a lesson, appreciate it as a pleasure. Feel free to share one of your favorite poems in the comment section below and, if you wish, give the backstory of how you it came on your radar and why it "speaks" to you... 💓
It is indeed Feel Good Friday. As is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor (all poetry-related) to brighten your day/weekend/week. Enjoy!
~ Poetry & the Creative Mind 2021: Celebrating 25 years of National Poetry Month: We are thrilled to welcome an incredible lineup of readers, including Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Alexander, Lauren Ambrose, John Darnielle, Terrance Hayes, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Samin Nosrat, Sandra Oh, Jason Reynolds, Sarah Sze, and more. [Watched and listened to this phenomenal program last night, alternately weeping and smiling!]
~ This Is Why You Should Write Poetry, no matter what kind of writer you are: Poetry is a shortcut from heart to heart. “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.” — Allen Ginsberg
~ Our modern obsession with poetry is only growing: Outlining the popularity of the Instagram poet: Given the recent mainstream popularity of poets like Rupi Kaur, it’s no secret that there’s been a poetry revival over the last few years. Poems are no longer only read by aspiring writers, English majors, and souls who find refuge in words. They’re being circulated to the masses.
~ Do You Have a Favorite Poem?: Her name was Charlotte, and she was part of my mom’s book club. When I complimented her straw hat one afternoon, she invited me over for “tea and a poem.” My mom, of course, made me go. At first, I dreaded it. All my friends were selling Girl Scout cookies, and I was hanging out with Chaaaaarlotte. (573 comments, most of them offering up exquisite poems, many of them new to me... ❤)
~ When the Doctor Prescribes Poetry: “This crisis affects more or less everyone, and poetry can help us process difficult feelings like loss, sadness, anger, lack of hope.”
BOOK: Poetry Rx: How 50 Inspiring Poems Can Heal and Bring Joy To Your Life by Norman E. Rosenthal
POEM: Mugged by Poetry by Dorianne Laux
POEM: Mugged by Poetry by Dorianne Laux
—for Tony Hoagland who sent me a handmade chapbook made from old postcards called OMIGOD POETRY with a whale breaching off the coast of New Jersey and seven of his favorite poems by various authors typed up, taped on, and tied together with a broken shoelace.
Reading a good one makes me love the one who wrote it,
as well as the animal or element or planet or person
the poet wrote the poem for. I end up like I always do,
flat on my back like a drunk in the grass, loving the world.
Like right now, I'm reading a poem called "Summer"
by John Ashbery whose poems I never much cared for,
and suddenly, in the dead of winter, "There is that sound
like the wind/Forgetting in the branches that means
something/Nobody can translate..." I fall in love
with that line, can actually hear it (not the line
but the wind) and it's summer again and I forget
I don't like John Ashbery poems. So I light a cigarette
and read another by Zbigniew Herbert, a poet
I've always admired but haven't read enough of, called
"To Marcus Aurelius" that begins "Good night Marcus
put out the light/and shut the book For overhead/is raised
a gold alarm of stars..." First of all I suddenly love
anyone with the name Zbigniew. Second of all I love
anyone who speaks in all sincerity to the dead
and by doing so brings that personage back to life,
plunging a hand through the past to flip off the light.
The astral physics of it just floors me. Third of all
is that "gold alarm of stars..." By now I'm a goner,
and even though I have to get up tomorrow at 6 am
I forge ahead and read "God's Justice" by Anne Carson,
another whose poems I'm not overly fond of
but don't actively disdain. I keep reading one line
over and over, hovering above it like a bird on a wire
spying on the dragonfly with "turquoise dots all down its back
like Lauren Bacall". Like Lauren Bacall!! Well hell,
I could do this all night. I could be in love like this
for the rest of my life, with everything in the expanding
universe and whatever else might be beyond it
that we can't grind a lens big enough to see. I light up
another smoke, maybe the one that will kill me,
and go outside to listen to the moon scalding the iced trees.
What, I ask you, will become of me?
QUOTE(S): "All my life I have tried to save some part of my time for the inspiration which the poets give." ~ Newton D. Baker
"Then let us ask poetry to portray us as we are, our times, our ways of life. Who but our poets can give these supreme word-pictures to our descendants? How shall these children of our children visualize our era if our poets are silent? Through the cold, factual lines of historians? The limited dimensions of painters, sculptors and musicians? The poet is all and more than these." ~ Marie Bullock
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