Poetry Month at Brooklyn Arden



Short, terse, unfriendly,
Yet sometimes quite emotive;
I am the Haiku.
What Poetry Form Are You?

(from, of course, the lovely Fuse #8.)

So originally it was going to be a normal month around Brooklyn Arden, with perhaps fewer posts than usual because of the conference next weekend and crazy work to do and so forth. And then I realized it was National Poetry Month, and I thought, Oh, this is a nice excuse to post that Gwendolyn Brooks poem I love so much.

Oh, and that Stephen Dunn.

Oh, and that George Herbert . . .

And that reminded me of Richard Wilbur, Sharon Olds, John Keats, John Donne -- all the people I read and loved as an English major and before and after, the array of minds and hearts and passions and philosophies that have spoken to me throughout my life, and shaped me, too, in the purity of their language and emotion, and in giving words and balm to my own feelings as I've discovered them. So we are having Poetry Month here at Brooklyn Arden -- perhaps not every day of the month, but many days, because there are so many poems I love and I want you to read them all now.

And I hope you love them too.