April is National Poetry Month!

National Poetry Month!

As someone who has been forced to read poems in archaic English and the dreaded (to me) concrete poem, I understand that reading poetry can be difficult. However, a friend of mine recently described poetry as "word magic" and I happen to think he's got a point. In fact, in writing this post I spend a chunk of the afternoon reading poetry and have been absolutely swooning over life. Poetry can do it all! Fit any mood! Express any feeling! Take you to any location! Check this out.

Would you like a brief, fun distraction from a long day? Try out Ogden Nash’s “The Ant”
The ant has made himself illustrious Through constant industry industrious. So what? Would you be calm and placid If you were full or formic acid?

Interested in word and phrase origins? By reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rhime of the Ancient Mariner” you find the source of the phrase, “Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink”
Poetry! Ta-da!

Perhaps you want to read a “classic” without being put to sleep. Why not try Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”? It’s about slaying a monster!

Do these options seem too cheerful for you? Perhaps you’d prefer something a big morose? Sylvia Plath is there for you.
“Soon, soon the flesh / the grave cave ate will be / At home on me”


Here are some other favorites of mine, my fellow librarians, and other “word magic” enthusiasts. (In roughly chronological order from newest to oldest).

• Dean Young (Currently the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at UT-Austin).
• Rita Dove
• Galway Kinnell
• Theodore Roethke
• e.e. cummings
• T.S. Eliot (Check out “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)
• William Carlos Williams
• Gertrude Stein “Tender Buttons”
• William Blake “Songs of Innocence”

For even more great poetry options, check out the National Poetry Month display on the third floor of Faulk Central Library!