Tag: National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month: April 3rd

April 3, 2016

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

working hands

This poem was selected by Jeff B. (Readers’ Services)

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National Poetry Month: April 2nd

April 2, 2016

The White Birds by William Butler Yeats

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbed, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

fade into birds

This poem was selected by Bridget P. (CAMS Branch)

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National Poetry Month: April 1st

April 1, 2016

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

contentment

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Adult Services Librarian)

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April is National Poetry Month

national poetry month logo

If you’re anything like us, you’ve been counting down to this very day.  Besides kick-starting the showers that bring the flowers, April 1st officially makes it next year for the Cubs and finally gives you cause to unleash that new whoopee cushion.  What’s most exciting, however, is that today means National Poetry Month is finally here, and we can get our poetry party started.  You see, today begins Off the Shelf’s 7th annual National Poetry Month extravaganza during which we showcase one “Poem of the Day” for the entire month of April.  For your poetry pleasure, we’ll also have plenty of poetry news, quotes, features, and much, much more.  So sit back, relax, and stay awhile.  This poetry party is just getting started.

Goodbye, National Poetry Month!

April 30, 2015

Time sure flies when you’re having fun.  It’s hard to believe another National Poetry Month is already drawing to a close, but for one last hurrah, don’t miss this great mini-film adaptation of W.S. Merwin’s poem “Antique Sound.”  Enjoy, and make sure to keep coming back to Off the Shelf for Poetry 365 – a great way to scratch your poetry itch all year long.

National Poetry Month: April 30th

To the Break of Dawn by Michael Robbins

I wandered lonely as Jay-Z
after the Fat Boys called it quits,
before the rapper from Mobb Deep
met up with the Alchemist.

I wandered lonely all along
The Watchtower’s office front
in Dumbo, then across the bridge
that tempts the bedlamite to song.

From here you could’ve seen what planes
can do with luck and delta-v
as that fire-fangled morning
jingle-jangled helter skelterly.

From your gravity fails to whoops
there goes gravity, from Celine
to Celan, from “Turn the Beat Around”
to And the Band Played On,

from the Live Free or Die
of plates from New Hampshire
to Musidora vamping
her way through Les Vampires,

from It Takes a Nation
of Millions to Hold Us Back
to Daydream Nation,
from Station to Station,

I take this cadence from the spinning plates
where the DJ plots the needle’s fall.
I take it, and I give it back again
to the dollar dollar bill and the yes yes y’all.

turntables

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Adult Services Librarian)

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National Poetry Month: April 27th

April 27, 2015

The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;–
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

world too much

This poem was selected by Heather R. (Adult Services Librarian)

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National Poetry Month: April 25th

April 25, 2015

Natural History by E.B. White

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider’s webs a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.

(Sent by White to his wife during a 1929 business trip and published fifty years later.)

attached lovers

This poem was selected by Jeff B. (Readers’ Services)

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