April Read A Poem A Day!

As I learned last year from Saipan Writer, April is National Poetry Month. Last year, I celebrated the month by posting my favorite poem, but this year I've decided I'm going to read a poem every day and each Tuesday post the titles and authors here. I'm so excited about it that instead of paying attention to the news on the way home I thought about which poems with which I want to start, some old favorites by Auden, Giovanni, Eliot, Shakespeare, Sandburg, and Ginsberg.


That's not pretension. While I'm not a professional one, I was an English major. I can prove it: I still have my Norton's Anthology of Modern Poetry.



Then Robert Siegel and Michele Norris caught my attention by announcing that Richard Fagles, who had translated Homer and Virgil, had passed away. I got through four years of a liberal arts education without reading either, though I made an attempt to read The Odyssey a couple years ago. The announcement of his death was followed by a recording of Dr. Fagles reading part of The Iliad. I take this as an auspicious start to celebrating National Poetry Month.


If you have poems to suggest I read, please do so.