April's Poetry Posting Wrap-up

In Celebration of National Poetry Month, I posted a poem to my Facebook page every day in April. I didn’t do any advance planning, just a quick internet search, sometimes on a particular subject, sometimes just visiting my favorite internet poetry haunts. With only a couple exceptions, every poem I posted was new to me, and I think It was one of the favorite things I’ve ever done on Facebook. Since these poems are soon to be buried in the inexorable roll of new posts, I’ve gathered all the links below in a kind of ad hoc and personal anthology.

Here are the poems posted for each day of April:

1. April by Alicia Ostriker

2. Barking by Jim Harrison -- yes that Jim Harrison, who just passed last year.

3. Leaves by Philip Levine, U.S. Poet Laureate 2011-2012

4. An excerpt from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams

It is difficult 

to get the news from poems

yet me die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

5. Where the Tides Ebb and Flow by Lord Dunsany (check out his masterful micro fictions, too!)

6. The Cats Will Know by Cesare Pavese

7. Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, inspired by this quote:

"If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies." ~William Faulkner

8. A Light Exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson

9. America by Claude McKay, written in 1921, it feels grimly prescient today.

10. In the rap as poetry category here's Taking Off by Clipping. BTW, their album Splendor and Misery is up for a Hugo this year.

11. One of my favorites, Child's Talk in April by Christina Georgina Rossetti

12. Fantastic Breasts and Where to Find Them by Brenna Twohy. Yeah, you read that right. Feminist spoken word that's funny with a sting at the end. Just excellent, scroll to the bottom for the video.

13. In the Airport by Eleni Sikélianòs

A man called Dad walks by
then another one does. Dad, you say
and he turns, forever turning, forever
being called. Dad,  he turns, and looks
at you, bewildered, his face a moving
wreck of skin, a gravity-bound question
mark, a fruit ripped in two, an animal
that can't escape the field 

14. The world seems... by Gregory Orr

15. Old Mama Saturday by Marie Ponsot

16. A sonnet for Easter Sunday, 1985 by Charles Martin. The link includes some good commentary.

17. Monday by Billy Collins
18. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth, another sonnet (The Prelude is one of my favorite long poems.)
19. The Body by Marianne Boruch:

has its little hobbies. The lung

likes its air best after supper,

goes deeper there to trade up

for oxygen, give everything else

away. (And before supper, yes,

during too, but there’s

something about evening, that

slow breath of the day noticed: oh good,

still coming, still going ... ) As for

bones—femur, spine,

the tribe of them in there—they harden

with use. The body would like

a small mile or two. Thank you.

It would like it on a bike

or a run. Or in the water. Blue.

And food. A habit that involves

a larger circumference where a garden’s

involved, beer is brewed, cows

wake the farmer with their fullness,

a field surrenders its wheat, and wheat

understands I will be crushed

into flour and starry-dust

the whole room, the baker

sweating, opening a window

to acknowledge such remarkable

confetti. And the brain,

locked in its strange

dual citizenship, idles there in the body,

neatly terraced and landscaped.

Or left to ruin, such a brain,

wild roses growing

next to the sea. The body is

gracious about that. Oh, their

scent sometimes. Their

tangle. In truth, in secret,

the first thing 

in morning the eye longs to see. 

20. For Women Who Are Difficult to Love by Warsan Shire
21. Catfish by Claudia Emerson (one of my favorite poets)
22. For Earth Day: Projection by Anna M. Evans 
23. The Song of the Ungirt Runners by Charles Hamilton Sorley. Written shortly before he was killed in World War 1. Follow the link to read about the poem and the poet.
24. The Hidden by Truong Tran
25. The Young by Roddy Lumsden
26. Algebra of the Sky by David Hernandez found in Copper Nickel, an excellent place to find new poetry.
27. Cry of the Loon by Kai Carlson-Wee. Check out Button Poetry for lots of great spoken word poetry.
28. Completely Friday by Luis Garcia Montero
29. The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden. This poem is easy to find so here's an excellent essay.
30. The Mushroom Hunters by Neil Gaiman, read by Amanda Palmer.