Itâs here again â National Poetry Month. If you were taught, as poet Billy Collins joked, that you had to âtie a poem to a chair and beat a confession out of it . to find out what it really means,â you might flinch at the very idea.
But in this pandemic year, more and more people have found themselves turning to poetry not only to help face their pain, but also to remember moments of light. Thanks to people who shared some of their own favorites this month, I found Ashland poet Angela Howe Deckerâs poem about waking to watch her young boys who have crept into their parentsâ bed âlike cats or friendly spiritsâ and before dawn are âgreat wizards in small bodies, / arms outstretched above their heads, / drawing deep swells of breath and / pulling the morning toward us.â
James Crews was already collecting poems of joy, hope and gratitude for How to Love the World, when the novel coronavirus pandemic suddenly spread across the globe; forcing the majority of the population to shelter in place for the better part of 2020. I was putting the book together right before spring and I was just in search of some of that hope of a new day to come, Crews said.
A year later, those much needed messages of renewal, of new life, he said, feel more relevant than before. How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, set for release on March 23, is Storey Publishing s first book of collected poems; its first book of poetry. Crews, who lives on an organic farm with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vt., is a professor of poetry and creative writing at the University of Albany and the author of three collections of poetry of his own.
by January Gill O Neil | Dec 23, 2020Boyfriend Pantoum Hallmark does not make a card for this for what we mean to each other, for what we do when my kids are asleep. We are not married. Not husband and wife. What do we mean to each other? More than lovers, more than friends but we are not married. Not. by January Gill O Neil | Jun 15, 2015A gray hoodie will not protect my son from rain, from the New England cold. I see the partial eclipse of his face as his head sinks into the half-dark and shades his eyes. Even in our quiet suburb with its unlocked doors, I fear for his safety the darkest child on our.
My boyfriend asks, “what do you
know about me?” as he brings me water at 3 a.m.
With the inside left blank
I write
who brings me a glass of water at 3 a.m.,
whose body was made to fit inside my body:
There’s no one else I’d rather spend my nights with.
Who are we when my kids are asleep?
His beautiful body fits inside of my body.
Hallmark does not make a card for this.
The Great Hello
in the western sky. The deep pond
awakens with the tongues of bullfrogs.
I’m barely over the threshold before