2016 National Poetry Month weekly selections

Tuesday, April 12
Today's National Poetry Month selection is from Our House was on Fire by Laura Van Prooyen. Our House Was on Fire was a winner of our Robert McGovern Memorial Prize, nominated by former APP board member Philip Levine.
Could Be a Bird
Could be
a bird
would trade
its wings
for hands
for the chance
to grasp
this mango
and lift it
to the tongue
feathers
for fingers
opposable
thumbs
for the chance
to hold
a pencil
and scrawl
goodbye
even
at the expense
of flight.
If you enjoyed this poem, try "Perennial," another selection from Our House Was on Fire, which appeared on Blackbird in 2009.
Invite a friend to sign up at: http://eepurl.com/bid2FL and watch for our next post on Thursday.
Photo "White-eye and Ume flowers" provided by Ik T via Flickr's Creative Commons license.
Thursday, April 7
This poem by Anna George Meek comes from The Genome Rhapsodies, chosen by Angie Estes as the 2014 Richard Snyder Publication Prize winner. The book includes several examples of Meek's unique "bricolage" poetry, which combines words and phrases from different found texts to create a poem that speaks to the chemistry between the two texts. It is offered this week in honor of those remembering Kurt Cobain.
Safety Pin
A bricolage of words and phrases from
- an article on the history of the safety pin
- Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter
Only because I love,
I have coiled, tensile strength
shaped like a human hand.
Usefulness terrifies me.
Steel earrings, chains, and wristbands:
Passion bears resemblance to being jabbed
in an acid bath by one factory,
and pressed against grinding wheels,
and subjected to electrically charged
skewers of wood. The future
is automatic; it passes
through increasingly narrower dies.
I’m too much.
I appreciate the fact that
empathy allows for a range of motions.
In India, for example, pins and sewing needles
are kept and used for generations,
passed on from mother to daughter.
Myself, I can barely open up when released;
please: worn, torn, or brittle,
keep going.
Try "Heirloom" from Anna George Meek, reprinted on Verse Daily earlier this year.
Invite a friend to sign up at: http://eepurl.com/bid2FL and watch for our next post on Tuesday.
Photo "Safety Pin" provided by Jess! S via Flickr's Creative Commons license.
Tuesday, April 5
We start our month of National Poetry Month selections with a poem from Luminous Other by Robin Davidson. Davidson was our 2012 Snyder Prize winner and is currently serving as poet laureate of Houston, Texas. The poem Under the Moon takes inspiration from fellow Texas artist Billy Hassell.
Under the Moon
A painting by Billy Hassell
A man takes the long way home,
sees in the blue-black dark the figure of a wolf,
the shape of darkness
swallowing up all where he walks.
The wolf contains constellations
and the man moves under the stars
in the wolf’s belly, swims among them, lost,
afraid of the shape darkness takes.
He begins again.
A man walks home under the moon as if
the sky were a blank canvas, a page of a sketchbook
he keeps in his back pocket, a map
of tangled branches where a raven perches,
fire under her wing. He holds the moon
in his palm like fireflies he’s trapped,
until his knuckles shine,
and with that light he paints
the moon, the blue-black night,
the raven, the fish, the luminous wolf.
He reaches into the canvas,
turns his hands to the raven’s nest,
rolls the night-eggs in his palm,
until they are hard as the moon or lapis lazuli,
stones which open,
each crystalline face a door.
The man enters, is immersed in blue stone, in darkness
among constellations he can never contain,
among angels, raven-like, haunting.
Or, the dark inhabits him
and he devours grief until it sparkles,
rises like angels or stars, like fireflies
released into a night meadow, soaring,
leaving his body.
A man takes the long way home,
and what he finds under the moon
is the loose weave of hand and eye,
pigment and light, an interior
tide tethering him to the night-
violet grass, releasing him
from his own, small reflection.
Is it still snowing where you're at? Try Robin's poem "Winter Litany" instead.
Sign up here to receive a poem each Tuesday and Thursday during the month of April.
Photo "Wolf Moon 3" provided by Mark Evans via Flickr's Creative Commons license.