April is the coolest month, y’all. (T.S. who?)
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Suddenly I am a little ashamed of my ladybug poem. I just read someone else’s poems about the same, invasive species, and they are so, so moving. They came at the end of one of the more gripping books of poetry I’ve ever read — I mean, I couldn’t put it down — and now I see these utterly familiar insects in a new light. But this is what poetry does, isn’t it?
I bought the book this morning at Webster’s Bookstore Café in State College, Pennsylvania (which incidentally now stocks Odes to Tools) and it’s one of 30 poetry books I’ll be blogging about here next month, one a day, for (Inter-)National Poetry Month. Originally I thought I’d focus on chapbooks, but I’ve decided to broaden it to any poetry book, including a few that I’ve read at least once before. But probably no Collected Works, because each book will still need to be short enough to read (or re-read) in an hour or two and then review or write a creative response to.
NaPoWriMo — National Poetry Writing Month — has really caught on among online poets, and that’s great, but I’m already writing at least one poem a day, if you count my brief Morning Porch entries as poems (they’re usually pretty close). What I don’t do enough of is blog about the poetry books I read, so for me it’s going to be NaPoReMo. I’m going to try to keep the selection as varied as possible to increase the chances of including something that will appeal to almost everyone who reads here, not just fellow hardcore poetry fans. I even picked up a book of baseball poetry today.
So I’ve just finished all the book-buying I intend to do in preparation, but I do want to repeat the offer I made a few days ago on Facebook: if you’re the author of a book of poetry and you’d like me to consider it for inclusion as one of the 30, feel free to mail me a review copy. I’ll probably send a copy of Odes to Tools in exchange, so you’ll get something out of it one way or the other.
One other thing I’ll be doing for National Poetry Month is a reading and multimedia presentation in support of Odes to Tools. I’ll have more information about that in another post, but please mark your calendars: it’ll be at 3:30 pm on Saturday, April 10, at the aforementioned Webster’s Bookstore Cafe in downtown State College. Come for the books, stay for the great coffee. I like to think of it as a pilgrimage.
:-) that was a fun video!
Wow, I’m humbled. I could not possibly read that much poetry in so short a time!
It will require focus. I will probably not have much time for my own creative writing — or perhaps (I hope) my reponses to the books will take on a form more creative than the typical review. But I can’t count on that. I’m sure at least some of the posts will be quite humdrum.
I think my students will dig this take on Canterbury Tales. It’s already made my day.
I’ll be looking forward to hearing about these 30 poetry books.
The video definitely deserves to go viral, but I think it’s probably too nerdy for that. I love the one guy’s Japanese Club t-shirt!