April 17, 2014
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” — Emily Dickinson
Poetry
National Poetry Month: April 17th
April 17, 2014
Motion by Octavio Paz If you are the amber mare . .I am the road of blood If you are the first snow . .I am he who lights the hearth of dawn If you are the tower of night . .I am the spike burning in your mind
National Poetry Month: April 16th
April 16, 2014
Giraffes by Mary Ann Hoberman Giraffes I like them. Ask me why. Because they hold their heads up high. Because their necks stretch to the sky. Because they’re quiet, calm, and shy. Because they run so fast they fly. Because their eyes are velvet brown. Because their coats are spotted tan. Because they eat the […]
National Poetry Month: April 15th
April 15, 2014
Dust If You Must by Rose Milligan Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better To paint a picture or write a letter, Bake a cake or plant a seed, Ponder the difference between want and need? Dust if you must, but there’s not much time, With rivers to swim and mountains to climb, […]
National Poetry Month: April 14th
April 14, 2014
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,– if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: […]
National Poetry Month: April 13th
April 13, 2014
I Write by Larrinita Starks As I sit down on the bed and cut off the lights I think about my life and begin to write I write for the families dying on the streets I am scared to lay down because of the gunshots in my sleep I write because I am hurting, there […]
Frank O'Hara Reading
April 12, 2014
Check out this rare footage of New York School poet Frank O’Hara reading “Having a Coke with You.” Enjoy! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8]
National Poetry Month: April 12th
April 12, 2014
Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly) Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder’s hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my […]
National Poetry Month: April 11th
April 11, 2014
Insomniac by Maya Angelou There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful. This poem was selected by Lesley W. (Head of Adult Services) Poetry Copyright Notice
April 10, 2014
“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” — Robert Frost