National Poetry Month poster from Poets.org
Novels and memoirs perpetually show up on the BookPage most-viewed list, but since April is National Poetry Month, I want to encourage readers to branch out a bit and enjoy some verse.
Before you do anything else, read this poetry roundup from our April print edition. Diann Blakely highlights several new collections, including Poetry in Person by Alexander Neubauer, The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass and others. Younger readers will enjoy our roundup of children’s poetry books—with titles like Can You Dig It? and Everybody Was a Baby Once, this feature proves that poetry can be silly and fun.
Many websites are hosting special series or e-mails in honor of National Poetry Month:
- Every year, Knopf offers a free poem a day. (Click here to sign up.) The poem of today is “Self-portrait” by Edward Hirsch. (“My left leg dawdled or danced along, / my right cleaved to the straight and narrow. / My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation, / my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.”)
- Poets.org also delivers a poem-a-day. (Sign up here.) Today’s poem is Philip Levine’s “A Story.” (“The worn spot on the sill / is where Mother rested her head when no one saw, / those two stained ridges were handholds / she relied on; they never let her down. / Where is she now?”) They also have an iPhone app called Poem Flow, so you can read poetry on the go.
- FSG sends daily poems, too (Sign up here), in addition to keeping an entire Poetry Month blog (“The Best Words in Their Best Order“), where you can find event highlights, audio coverage and posts from big names such as Jonathan Galassi, poet and publisher of FSG. Today he writes about poetry in translation.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to celebrate Poetry Month!
Who are your favorite poets? What poems do you like to re-read? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win Shel Silverstein‘s classic A Light in the Attic (a special edition with 12 new poems!). Deadline: Next Thursday, April 8 at 10 a.m.
I will always love Robert Frost’s “Home Burial“—probably because the first time I heard it was when Frank Bidart read it out loud in my senior year poetry seminar in college. (” ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,’ she cried.”) And Pablo Neruda’s Odes are very special to me. Trying to teach a kid to love poetry? Pick an ode, any ode. I like “Ode to Tomatoes.” (And after reading it out loud, hand her a copy of Pam Muñoz Ryan’s fabulous The Dreamer—read an interview with the author here.)
This is one of my favorites from Douglas Florian. Who would have thought that a poem about a bug could be so poignant?
The Mayfly
A mayfly flies
In May or June
Its life is over
Far too soon.
A day or two
To dance,
To fly–
Hello
Hello
Good-bye
Good-bye.
I love to read and reread Marge Piercy’s poetry.
Anything by Robert Frost. I read him in middle school and have been a fan ever since!
I like Christina Rosetti’s, Who Has Seen The Wind? I remember it from around middle school.
I enjoy all of Leonard Cohen’s meaningful poetry.
I have always loved Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night…
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
but I also LOVE Shel Silverstein’s Hug of War…
I will not play at tug o’war.
I’d rather play at hug o’war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
My Grandma gave me a kids book of poems when I was little and it had a little of everything and I just loved it!
Shel Silverstein is the reason I love poetry. I had all of his poems memorized as a kid and I never gave away those books…..
I started my poetry run with Shel Silverstein as a kid, and of all poems these days, I re-read his perhaps the most. I also LOVE Cecilia Woloch’s Fireflies, which I got one day in the daily Writer’s Almanac email:
And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn’t hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who’ve wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don’t even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.
Other than that, I rarely read poetry except to open one of my random anthologies and see what page I land on!
If you want to know exactly where the property line is, just watch the neighbor cut the grass.
I remember a poem called “The childrens Hour”
We had to memorize it in school. The only part I can recall is this line.
Between the dawn and the darkness when the light is beginning to lower, etc etc comes the time that is known as the childrens hour. The poem is by Longfellow
and is on google in its entirety. I still love it.
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