Poem-a-Day - Arab American Heritage Month and more

April 5, 2022

If your heart is a volcano how shall you
expect flowers to bloom in your hands?

Spend time with selections from Kahlil Gibran’s Sand and Foam: A Book of Aphorisms (Knopf, 1926), which entered the public domain this year, in honor of Arab American Heritage Month.

Gibran Khalil Gibran, born January 6, 1883, in Ottoman Syria (present-day Lebanon), was a Lebanese American poet, writer, and visual artist. He was the author of many collections, including The Madman: His Parables and Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1918) and The Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, 1923). Gibran died on April 10, 1931.

Mahjar Movement

Mahjar, derived from hijra, Arabic for “migration,” refers to a movement of poets and writers from Syria and Lebanon to the Americas that began around 1850 and continued into the twentieth century.

Against Heaven

Happy publication day to Kemi Alabi, whose collection Against Heaven, winner of the 2021 First Book Award, is out today from Graywolf Press.

“Against Heaven activates multiple lexicons, seeking to construct the immensity of Black queer subjectivity with guile and formal virtuosity. At once sonic and disruptive, these poems pull together everything in a world where nothing is sacred.” —Claudia Rankine, 2021 First Book Award judge

Purchase your copy of Against Heaven here and read more of Alabi’s work.

Honoring Richard Howard

“Even though we give (give up) ourselves to this mortal process of continuing, it is the movement that creates the form.”

We remember Richard Howard, who passed away on March 31 in Manhattan at age 92. Howard authored several collections of poetry, including Untitled Subjects (Atheneum, 1969), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize, and was president of PEN American Center (1979–80) and poet laureate of New York state (1993–95). In addition to a prolific career as a poet, translator, and educator, Howard was Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets.

“Young people can pick up so much verbally and nonverbally. It’s those moments that go beyond words that really come across in the poetry.”

—Read this interview with 2021 Poet Laureate Fellow, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, on her work in San Antonio.

“I do not save drafts. If a line or a stanza goes, then it’s gone. And that adds to the excitement, the immediacy. This could go on for two or three days. Going back every hour.”

Read this interview with Colm Tóibín, whose debut poetry collection, Vinegar Hill, was recently published by Beacon Press. Read more about Tóibín here.

Don’t miss our signature National Poetry Month virtual reading, Poetry & the Creative Mind, with masters of ceremony Richard Blanco and Terrance Hayes, and featuring readings of favorite poems from Rosanne Cash, Willem Dafoe, Ann Dowd, 2022 Leadership Award recipient Joy Harjo, and more luminaries from across the arts and culture.

This signature annual gala celebrating poetry’s important place in our lives, raises critical funds to support the Academy of American Poets Education Program. Join us for our live broadcast April 28, at 7:30 p.m. EDT, free and open to the public. Learn more at Poets.org.

Poem in your Pocket Day

The twentieth annual Poem in Your Pocket Day will happen on Friday, April 29, to culminate this year’s National Poetry Month. All are encouraged to celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day in classrooms, libraries, bookstores, workplaces, parks, and homes, as well as on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem. Read more about how to participate here and our National Poetry Month initiatives.

The Trayvon Generation

Happy publication day to Elizabeth Alexander’s book, The Trayvon Generation, named one of TIME magazine’s most anticipated titles of 2022. Alexander, Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is the recipient of several honors including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes. Alexander read her poem “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Purchase your copy here and read more of Alexander’s work.

Sponsored Content

Comprising more than forty manuscripts, broadsides, and first editions, Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work In Community, on view through June 5, 2022, celebrates Brooks’s roles as a poet, teacher, mentor, and community leader. Plan your visit at themorgan.org.

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: WeHo Reads: Trans | Future | Poetics

Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: WeHo Reads: Trans | Future | Poetics, a virtual reading hosted by West Hollywood City Poet Laureate and 2021 Poets Laureate Fellow Brian Sonia-Wallace, featuring Ryka Aoki, Harry Josephine Giles, Simba the Poet, and Ava Dadvand. Wednesday, April 6, at 6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET. FREE. Register here.

Scholastic Inc. in New York City is seeking a full-time associate marketing manager.
University of Nevada, Reno, is seeking a full-time assistant professor in creative writing.

Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye discuss her curatorial approach and her own creative work. Read more about Shihab Nye, the author of Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (Greenwillow Books, 2020), plus poems here.

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

March 27: “The Spring Has Many Silences” by Laura Riding Jackson
March 28: “My Local Dead” by Mark Wunderlich
March 29: “Farnaz” by Farnaz Fatemi
March 30: “Lion” by Tina Chang
March 31: “We Dream The Dreams Dreaming Us” by Brian Tierney
April 1: “The Aunty Poem (Mi Privilege Es Su Privilege)” by Mohja Kahf
April 2: from “Sand and Foam” by Kahlil Gibran

Thank you to the following 2022 #NationalPoetryMonth sponsors & partners who help make possible the largest literary celebration in the world: 826 National, AGNI, ABRAMS Books, Alaska Quarterly Review, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., American Booksellers Association, American Library Association, American Poetry Review, The Betsy South Beach Hotel, Blue Flower Arts, BOA Editions, Ltd., Bright Hill Press, CavanKerry Press, Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, Changes Press, and City Lights Books.

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Arab American Heritage Month Lebanese American poet Black queer subjectivity Happy publication day Alfred A Knopf Gibran Khalil Gibran

Poem-a-Day - Arab American Heritage Month and more

If your heart is a volcano how shall you
expect flowers to bloom in your hands?

Key phrases

Older messages

"High, Higher, Highest" by Samuel Hazo

"On Time" by Robin Robertson

from "The Land" by Vita Sackville-West

from "Sand and Foam" by Kahlil Gibran

"The Aunty Poem (Mi Privilege Es Su Privilege)" by Mohja Kahf

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Poem-a-Day - Arab American Heritage Month and more

If your heart is a volcano how shall you expect flowers to bloom in your hands?

Key phrases

Older messages

You Might Also Like

If your heart is a volcano how shall you
expect flowers to bloom in your hands?