March 28, 2023

Existential Poems

“I Was Told the Sunlight Was a Cure” by Hanif Abdurraqib
“Some Microbes” by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
“You remember the feeling but not what made you feel that way” by Elizabeth Barnett
“Because I could not stop for Death (479)” by Emily Dickinson
“On Living” by Nâzim Hikmet
“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe
“Hurstonian Mythos 0.2: Custodial Spirits” by Ra Malika Imhotep
“Man Hesitates but Life Urges” by D’Arcy McNickle
“Note to Self Work” by Beau Sia
“Gitanjali 60” by Rabindranath Tagore

Congratulations to Sara Daniele Rivera, the winner of the 2023 First Book Award, the nation’s most generous first-book prize for a poet. Rivera’s manuscript, The Blue Mimes, was selected by Eduardo C. Corral and will be published by Graywolf Press in April 2024, and Rivera will receive $5000 and a six-week residency at Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy.

more at poets.org

“Tearing the veil separating me and that which grief conceals from me, I find knowledge, and knowledge is the ambition of my poetry.”

Read Paul Tran’s reflection on grief and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, as part of the Poetry Coalition’s programming and seventh annual theme, “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief.”

more at poets.org

Sponsored Content

The Ruth Weiss Foundation offers $6,000 annually in awards that seek poetic originality. For this year’s awards theme, poet Ruth Weiss dedicated her life to raising awareness about child war survivors. W atch her story and a pply by September 1, 2023.

“Poetry is community. Poetry gives us mirrors and windows, lets us see ourselves and others through a vulnerable, and yet, powerful medium: language. Image. Metaphor. Music. ”

Read an interview with Gailmarie Pahmeier, 2022 Poet Laureate Fellow in Nevada, on her project and the epistolary form.

“Driving Dad to The Dog Museum”
“Address What Matters”

more at poets.org

Poetry & the Creative Mind, our signature National Poetry Month celebration and benefit reading, will return to the virtual stage as a free, livestreamed event on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

With readings of favorite poems by luminaries from across the arts and culture, the broadcast celebrates the important role poetry plays in the lives of readers. Join Ethan Hawke, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Shantell Martin, Liam Neeson, Molly Shannon, Nobel Peace Prize–winner Malala Yousafzai, and more, for this singular virtual event hosted by Masters of Ceremony Richard Blanco and Kimiko Hahn.

learn more & register free

Registration is free for all attendees. Your gift during registration supports the Academy of American Poets’ programs and publications, including free resources for educators during National Poetry Month and throughout the year.

Watch Sean Hill read “Insurance Man 1946.” This is the seventh film in Above Strands of Earth: Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation at Tippet Rise, a film series produced in collaboration with Tippet Rise Art Center and the Academy of American Poets. Directed by Matthew Thompson and shot at Tippet Rise Art Center. Learn more at https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org.

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week

Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: a tribute to Academy of American Poets Chancellor Emeritus Richard Howard, featuring readings by Edward Hirsch, Grace Schulman, Vijay Seshadri, Craig Morgan Teicher, and more. Friday, March 31, at 7 p.m. ET at the Miller Theater at Columbia University (2960 Broadway, New York, NY). Free admission. Registration is required, but does not guarantee seating, which is first come, first served. Register here.

more at poets.org

Comma

To never be touched again. That line
has a sound. Hear it?
I don’t want to bring a story
to it. Not even an image.
It has a sound. Listen.

To never be touched. Oh, a nurse,
a doctor, but never to be touched in that way.
You know what way. Listen.
Hear it. Let’s not tag it with a feeling.
Give me a break. What possible song

would you play when you toss my ashes,
someone once asked me.
There is no song, he said. Don’t
narrativize, Diane. Don’t narrativize Diane.
See what a comma can do?

Read more poems by Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Read and listen to Seuss discuss the Poem-a-Day curatorial approach and more on Poets.org.

more at poets.org

Request your free copy of the official National Poetry Month poster in time for the April 2023 celebration!

The 2023 poster was designed by Marc Brown, creator of the popular Arthur series. The artwork incorporates an excerpted line from the poem “The Carrying” by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

more at poets.org

North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is seeking a full-time assistant professor of English.
Tin House in Portland, Oregon, is seeking a full-time marketing manager. Send a resume and cover letter with the subject line “Marketing Manager” to careers@tinhouse.com. Apply by April 7.

Revisit last week’s Poem-a-Day selections with us on Poets.org:

March 19: “Rain Fugue” by Jessie Redmon Fauset
March 20: “Description of Symptoms” by Allison Benis White
March 21: “Holocene Sonnet” by Lisa Fay Coutley
March 22: “Snail-Picking” by Onyedikachi Chinedu
March 23: “A Monstrous Catalpa Tree Grows from a Drain” by Regan Good
March 24: “The Moon Is in Labor” by Gail Wronsky
March 25: “To a Daisy” by Alice Meynell

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let the process of shedding / be joyous in its eternity.

Comma

Older messages

"Mouth" by Dana Roeser

"Ubi Sunt" by Virginia Konchan

"Our Casuarina Tree" by Toru Dutt

"To a Daisy" by Alice Meynell

"The Moon Is in Labor" by Gail Wronsky

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