Let the poemapalooza begin!
April is National Poetry Month.
I know, I know.
You don’t do poetry. You lost the urge for it when your English teacher made you beat it senseless.
Come back to the word that captures a world.
Each April I feature a poem every day on 37days. It is my way of reentering the rhythm of life through words that slow me down, make me see things I miss, help me understand what is beneath the surface of a thing. Words buoy us and thrill us; they express things we didn’t know could be expressed. They are magical.
We need not understand poems to appreciate the words that form them. We can recognize ourselves in them instead. I suggest every poem be read aloud, repeatedly, and copied by hand onto notebook paper, as I have done daily for many years. The act of that transcription slows us down again, enables us to form the words in our own hand, puts the point of creation closer to us.
Come, let’s make our lives a poem. And if you are interested, here are 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month. And a piece of advice from a poet will be published each day here.
One of my favorite poets is Erin Coughlin Hollowell whose book of poetry (Pause, Traveler) is one of my favorites. Let’s start with a poem of hers.
