Tag: National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month: April 30th

April 30, 2013

In My Craft or Sullen Art by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Readers’ Services)

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National Poetry Month: April 29th

April 29, 2013

In an Artist’s Studio by Christina Georgina Rossetti

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
artists studio
Portrait of Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Rossetti (1854).

This poem was selected by Laura H. (Readers’ Services)

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National Poetry Month: April 28th

April 28, 2013

The novice who had some gold by Farid Attar (translated Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis)

A novice hid a little store of gold.
His sheikh knew this, although he’d not been told.
There was a journey that they had to make —
The two set out, the young man and his sheikh;
Then night came to the valley where they walked,
And into two the path they followed forked.
The novice trembled for his hidden gold
(Which makes its owners rather less than bold);
“Which way do you advise?” he asked his sheikh.
“There are two paths; which is the best to take?”
The sheikh said: “Throw out what you cannot hide,
Then either way will do — as you decide.”

National Poetry Month: April 27th

April 27, 2013

One More Hymn to the Sun by Lisel Mueller

You know that like an ideal mother
she will never leave you,
though after a week of rain
you begin to worry
but you accept her brief absences,
her occasional closed doors
as the prerogative
of an eccentric lover…
You like the fact that her moods are an orderly version of yours,
arranged, like the needs of animals,
by seasons: her spring quirks,
her sexual summers,
her steadfast warmth in the fall;
you remember her face on Christmas Day,
blurred, and suffused with the weak smile
of a woman who has just given birth
The way she loves you, your whole body,
and still leaves enough space between you
to keep you from turning to cinders
before your time! …
She never gave up on you
though it took you billions of years
to learn the alphabet
and the shadow you cast on the ground
changed its shape again and again

This poem was selected by Jill Schacter (Administration)

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National Poetry Month: April 26th

April 26, 2013

Like a Manta Ray by James Tate

I can swim the length of the public pool
underwater. I like to swim right along the
bottom with my eyes open, and sometimes I find
things — a barrette, some change, a ring, a gold
chain, some plastic spacemen, a comb, nothing
too extraordinary. But this one day I was
swimming along and I spotted a pearl, and then
another and so on until I had both hands full
of pearls, real pearls. When I surfaced I
heard this darkly tanned, obviously wealthy woman
screaming at the pool attendant, “Someone has
stolen my pearls!” I quickly put the pearls inside
the netting of my swimming suit and climbed out
of the pool. I walked quickly toward the
dressing room, but then one pearl, then two, then
a third slipped out from my trunks and bounced
across the poolside toward a three-year-old boy
who had been listening to the lady with amusement.
He put his finger over his lips and smiled at me.
I had no use for the pearls and didn’t want them,
but somehow at that moment I didn’t want her
to have them anymore.

manta ray

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Readers’ Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 25th

April 25, 2013

A Box of Pastels by Ted Kooser

I once held on my knees a simple wooden box
in which a rainbow lay dusty and broken.
It was a set of pastels that had years before
belonged to the painter Mary Cassatt,
and all of the colors she’d used in her work
lay open before me. Those hues she’d most used,
the peaches and pinks, were worn down to stubs,
while the cool colors — violet, ultramarine —
had been set, scarcely touched, to one side.
She’d had little patience with darkness, and her heart
held only a measure of shadow. I touched
the warm dust of those colors, her tools,
and left there with light on the tips of my fingers.

pastels

This poem was selected by Laura H. (Readers’ Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 24th (Happy TV Tune Out Week!)

April 24, 2013

Television by Roald Dahl

The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.

National Poetry Month: April 23rd (Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!)

April 23, 2013

Sonnet CXXXVIII by William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
     Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
     And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

little white lie

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Readers’ Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 21st

April 21, 2013

a radio with guts by Charles Bukowski

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit out there on the roof
still playing
and I’d tell my woman,
“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

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