Happy National Poetry Month! When I was a teenager, I thought rhyming poetry was corny and free verse pretentious. But in college, I developed a love for the genre.
All this is to say: I understand that poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s sort of the literary equivalent of opera: It’s beautiful, but either you love it or you hate it.
Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of National Poetry Month, here are my recommendations to add more poetry to your life: - Go to poetry events: From open mics to featured readings, there are poetry events aplenty to hear or share your poetry, get inspired and connect with other writers.
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Follow poetry accounts on social media: I’m a big fan of the Instagram accounts @poetryisnotaluxury, @grieftolight, @readalittlepoem and @poetryfoundation. This is an easy way to find new poems and writers without having to dig.
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Keep a personal anthology: I had a professor with a unique assignment: hand-copy 50 different poems by 50 different writers. Hand-copying helps you get intimate with a poem: each word, piece of punctuation, line break, stanza break — you can develop a real appreciation for a piece when you copy it and look closely at the decisions the poet made. It’s also a pretty meditative practice.
For thousands of years, poetry has answered questions we don’t know how to ask, explored social issues and expressed emotion in ways that make a reader feel something.
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Jack Gilbert is one of my favorite poets. His poems about his wife after she died, like the famous “Michiko Dead,” are some of the most raw and touching pieces on love and grief. His poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” is one of my favorite love poems.
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An anthology worth reading |
My favorite anthology is “Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered,” by Catherine Bowman. What I like about the pieces in this collection is how they flow and their structure: They have a certain kind of punch to them because they initially were read on-air, and you can feel it when you read them. |
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| Poem: 'One Art' by Elizabeth Bishop |
One of my favorite poems is “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. I’ve always been fascinated by how things are lost and how they’re found. At first glance, “One Art” is about the minutiae of the day and lost things. But the villanelle builds from “the lost door keys and the hour badly spent” to houses, a watch and, finally, a love. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master; / so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”
As I get older, I rack up lost things: keys, my hearing, loved ones. The levity of the writing is genius, masking deep sorrow and the pain of loss.
The poem doesn’t bring me down, though. It makes me feel that this is just part of it all and that’s OK.
— Donna Liquori, Times Union Bibliophiles columnist
Read Donna's latest column: 5 books to start building your cannabis-friendly library |
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| Poem: 'At State and Pearl' by David Mitchell Kinnear |
The New York State Library’s Special Collections unit holds many local gems. This poem highlights some of Albany's historic events, people and architecture at the corners of State and Pearl streets in a joyous and whimsical way. The booklet opens with an invitation to “Come and Live with us in Beautiful, Historic Albany ... the ‘Wide Awake City.’” Kinnear then goes on to call the juncture of State and Pearl the “center of Albany's busiest whirl.” He ends the poem with a call to “Come live here in Albany — come quickly, come now.” It feels like a love poem to a city Kinnear called home his whole life.
The booklet also features images of Albany from the early 1910s.
Though not in the Library’s Digital Collections, it is available to read on the Internet Archive. — Elizabeth Jakubowski, senior librarian in the Manuscripts and Special Collections unit at the New York State Library |
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| Collection: 'Let the Dead In' by Saida Agostini |
One of my favorite poetry collections is “Let the Dead In” by Saida Agostini. I love this collection because of the sense of whiplash I get (in a good way) reading poems that swing between grief and joy.
— Anna Boughtwood, Albany Zine Club
What's the Albany Zine Club? Read our story. |
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| Poem: 'Wild Geese' by Mary Oliver |
In these wise words of Mary Oliver, I do NOT need to be good. So I will recommend a poet, collection and a poem. And I’m not even going to crawl through the desert feeling sorry about it. Favorite poem: “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver Favorite poet: Emily Dickinson Favorite collection of poems: “Ariel” by Sylvia Plath
— Ameara Ditsche, Times Union digital producer
Reader Barbara Stubblebine from Brunswick also liked “Wild Geese” for its “self-acceptance, connection to nature, the temporary nature of suffering, and finding one's place in the world.” |
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| Collection: 'The Moon is Always Female' by Marge Piercy |
This beautiful poetry collection, while realistic about the sad state of life, offers hope for a better world. Although it was originally published over three decades ago, the idealism it proposes is extremely relevant to readers and dreamers of today.
Here’s a verse from the “The Low Road”: “...it starts when you say we / and know who you mean; / and each day you mean one more.” — Lys G., Librarian at Albany Public Library, Howe branch |
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For Kobayashi Issa, a Buddhist poet born in a tiny village in central Japan, it's clear that no subject or facet of life was too small to be worthy of a poem. His work — which often features tiny creatures like fleas, flies or cats — is filled with levity and silliness. That's part of why I find myself returning to his haiku over and over. Favorite haiku by Issa, as translated by Robert Hass:
Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually. — Elizabeth Izzo, Times Union news editor |
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| Poem: 'Since Feeling is First' by E.E. Cummings |
My favorite poem is “Since Feeling is First” by E.E. Cummings. I first read it in my high school textbook. The lack of punctuation and use of grammatical terms intrigued me. I began to read all of his poems and started a lifelong appreciation of Cummings's use or lack of grammar rules and spacing to invoke meaning and poems that are a joy to read!
— Michelle, Librarian at Guilderland Public Library |
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| Collection: 'New and Selected Poems' by Marie Howe |
This collection highlights Howe's phenomenal past work alongside her brilliant new poems. Two of my favorites from this book are “Part of Eve's Discussion,” originally from her 1987 book “The Good Thief,” and “What the Living Do,” the titular poem of her 1997 collection.
Here are a couple more favorites:
Jericho Brown's Pulitzer-Prize-winning “The Tradition” engages powerfully and beautifully with racism in America. Form is front and center in Brown's invented form, the Duplex, versions of which are woven throughout the collection.
Richard Siken's newest collection, “I Do Know Some Things,” is full of gorgeous prose poems. I’ve been a fan of his since his first book “Crush,” but think this is his best work yet by far.
— Kalli, MochaLisa's Caffé & Books |
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| Collection: 'Music from Apartment 8' by John Stone |
Stone's poem “Autopsy in the Form of an Elegy” was introduced to me by my beloved aunt Lillie. This poem and others by Stone comforted my aunt through the loss of her father when she and my mother were young women. My grandfather was an organic chemist with a soft spot for animals. He was at once serious and driven, as well as deeply human. This poem in turn means a lot to me, and I revisit it often in times of grief. It so well encompasses the human experience — so profound and complex, and yet so fragile — held together by the sinew of muscle and cartilage.
— Bonnie Beaumont, library assistant, Albany Public Library, Arbor Hill/West Hill branch |
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| Collection: 'Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings' by Joy Harjo |
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| Collection: 'Harmonium' by Wallace Stevens |
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| Poem: 'Sonnet XVII / Soneto XVII' by Pablo Neruda |
“No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio / o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: / te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, / secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.”
“I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, / or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: / I love you as one loves certain obscure things, / secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”
Read the full poem here.
— Maria Martinez, library assistant, Albany Public Library |
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| | Poem: 'In the Free Box' by Carol Edelstein |
I read this poem by Carol Edelstein in Upstreet, a literary journal based in the Berkshires, more than 10 years ago. It depicts the complexity of grief in a way that is both beautiful and haunting. Since it’s difficult to find online, here is a full version of the poem: “A stuffed bear with one eye / sits upright against the broken toaster. / Set by the road, the cardboard that holds them has seen a few rains. / What's left after the good things / have been taken interests me. I have to glance in. / I want that feeling of not wanting. / For a while when / the grief of your passing was still new, I had it. / I rode all around town on that slow pony. / How rich I felt, clinging to her back.” — Elizabeth Izzo, Times Union news editor |
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| Collection: 'Howl and Other Poems' by Allen Ginsberg |
One of the powerful influences on my poetry (and life) since high school has been Allen Ginsberg. Not only did his poetry show me new ways of looking at the world and at poetry — and writing it — but he gave me a new, life-long appreciation of the work of William Blake and of Walt Whitman, two more of my “favorite poets.” While Ginsberg’s “Howl” is one of his masterpieces, for which he is deservedly renowned (or notorious), another, shorter poem of his, “A Supermarket in California,” is one I’ve gotten to know by heart, perhaps because it is shorter than “Howl;” it invokes the image of Walt Whitman wandering through a grocery store, followed by Allen.
One line in the poem I think of often is “I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd,” which is an oblique reference to a line in Whitman’s poem “So Long”: “… this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man …” But in general what moves me about the poem is that of a poet seeking his long gone hero in today’s world.
— Dan Wilcox, The Poetry Motel Foundation |
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Poem: “Kindness” by Naomi Shahib Nye: This poem is one that I have studied, taught and emulated. Its themes of grief and loss are timeless, and for a serious poem, it is extremely comforting to read. In these heavy times, it is true "... that only kindness makes sense" right now. — Nancy Klepsch, Troy, NY Collection: “The World Doesn't End” by Charles Simic: Perhaps I am biased because I took writing classes with Simic many years ago, but the way every guitar player has their favorite icon, Simic was someone I admired and emulated. — Thomas Cooke, Park City, Utah and sometimes Andes, NY. Collection: “Given Sugar, Given Salt” by Jane Hirschfield: Jane Hirschfield's poems are magical, distinctive. Many are not easy poems, but they deserve attention. The more your read them, the more they sink into your consciousness. I return to this book again and again.
From the poem “Rebus”: “You work with what you are given, / the red clay of grief, / the black clay of stubbornness going on after.” — Mary Makofske, Warwick, NY
Collection: “What I Couldn't Name” by Julie Granata: A collection of wonderful poems infused with emotion by a talented local poet. She'll make you feel a certain kinda way. — Adam, Averill Park
Poem: “Tarantella” by Hillaire Belloc: I have always enjoyed the way each line seems to push the action forward, while he adds in such descriptive info. And then the ending, sadly admitting that it was a long time ago.
— Bob D., Leeds, NY Poem: “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St. Vincent Millay: The author led an interesting life, and I love anything by her! Suggested reading: “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” and “Savage Beauty.” April 11 is National Pet Day and I just lost my cat of 14 years, so the lines below: From “Time Does Not Bring Relief”:
“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied / Who told me time would ease me of my pain! / I miss him in the weeping of the rain; / I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’ / And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”
— Laura Bellinger, Ephrata, NY Poet: Jim Harrison: The greatest American poet that has yet lived. He intertwines a deep connection to the land with beautiful and brutally honest tropes about life, love, humanity and food. — Shawna Russell, Albany, NY Collection: “The Shadow of Sirius” by W.S. Merwin: The Pulitzer Prize-winning collection that is a meditation on time and memory.
From “The Nomad Flute”: “I will listen until the flute stops / and the light is old again.” — Walter Worden, Middletown, NY |
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National Poetry Month continues! Check out these events through the end of April. Independent Bookstore Day is on Saturday, April 25: Here are a few local places that are celebrating. - The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza will have author signings, giveaways, refreshments, face painting and more. Get details.
- Black Walnut Books at The Shirt Factory in Glens Falls will also have book signings, a scavenger hunt and more. Get details.
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MochaLisa's Caffé and Books in Clifton Park will host a local author showcase all day. View the list of authors.
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Fables at the Ferry in Clifton Park is taking Springtime Fun Storytime outdoors. Children will be reading “Escargot and the Search for Spring.” Learn more.
A Bookish Market: The Book Hive is hosting this event, with bargain books, local authors, a book swap and more on April 25 at Common Roots Albany Outpost. Get details.
Northshire Book Festival: Northshire Bookstore's annual festival is May 1-3 in Manchester, Vermont. Stop by for a full weekend of guest authors, readings, signings, book trivia and more. Get tickets.
518 Queer Book Club Meetup: Head to Bard and Baker in Troy on May 10. The book for May is “Forest Euphoria” by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian. Get details. Got a book event you want to post here or in the Preview newsletter? Send a note to sdio...@timesunion.com. |
This newsletter is compiled by Sarah Diodato. Have questions or comments? Send a note to sdio...@timesunion.com.
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