How will you celebrate? I will be doing a little guerrilla poetry on sidewalks as I do every year and of course I'll have a poem in my pocket on April 18th. Here is a list of a few suggestion and you can use the link to Poets.org to see the whole list of 30.

1. Participate in "Poetry in Your Pocket Day" on April 18th.
2. Memorize a poem.
3. Go to a reading.
4. Recite a poem to family and friends.
5. Buy a book of poetry for you local library.
6. Buy a book of poetry for yourself! (I know which book I am going to buy)
7. Watch a movie about a poet (yes, there are a few)
8. Go to an open mic night and read a poem.

That should be enough to get anyone started. Happy poetry!

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/94

Saffron wrote:.
6. Buy a book of poetry for yourself! (I know which book I am going to buy)

Well...?

Maybe I'll try to read 30 different poets who are active today, one for each day of the month. That might be good for me, because I always tend to read dead poets.

DWill wrote:

Saffron wrote:.
6. Buy a book of poetry for yourself! (I know which book I am going to buy)

Well...?

Since you asked - A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver.

Might I suggest a few poets to check out - sure I might:
Richard Blanco
Dorianne Laux
Philip Levine
Thomas Lux
Taylor Mali
Gregory Orr (a Virginia poet)
and of course the current US Poet Laureate - Natasha Trethewey

I heard some of these poets read at the 2012 Dodge Poetry Festival.

E. O. Wilson has a new book out. Why mention it her on the National Poetry Month thread? Glad you asked. The title is your first clue - Letters to a Young Scientist. Anything about that title ring any bells? Rainier Marie Rilke? I especially enjoy when poetry and science hold hands. All through school I felt torn between science and the humanities. When asked about my education I say I was an art major by default (it was the only subject I had enough credits in by my senior year). I am sorry that at the time it appeared to me that I had to make a choice. I now think of science and poetry as two sides of the same coin. The skill set is the same for both: careful observation, a curious attitude toward the world and seeing the ordinary with new eyes. Now that I am thinking about the intersection of science and poetry, I will have to think of a few poems that fit the bill and post them. Anyone have any to offer?

If you are interested in Wilson's book, here is a link to an interview:
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/14/176815339 ... in-letters

Saffron wrote:E. O. Wilson has a new book out. Why mention it her on the National Poetry Month thread? Glad you asked. The title is your first clue - Letters to a Young Scientist. Anything about that title ring any bells? Rainier Marie Rilke? I especially enjoy when poetry and science hold hands. All through school I felt torn between science and the humanities. When asked about my education I say I was an art major by default (it was the only subject I had enough credits in by my senior year). I am sorry that at the time it appeared to me that I had to make a choice. I now think of science and poetry as two sides of the same coin. The skill set is the same for both: careful observation, a curious attitude toward the world and seeing the ordinary with new eyes. Now that I am thinking about the intersection of science and poetry, I will have to think of a few poems that fit the bill and post them. Anyone have any to offer?

If you are interested in Wilson's book, here is a link to an interview:
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/14/176815339 ... in-letters

There is a lot of truth in what you say about poetry and science, although I wonder if in their observations scientists and poets don't use different antennae, and whether that might account for the final difference between the two. The poet is after all most interested in subjective states, do you think, whereas the scientist usually thinks that subjective states will obscure the information that she attempts to glean? But still, I often feel, especially in listening to scientists talk about how they feel about their work, that there is kinship. Maybe the scientist has to hold back during the work, whereas the poet more often tries to let go. But now that I've said this, I'm not sure I haven't romanticized science a bit. Experiencing the wonder of nature, I suspect, isn't a typical experience in the exacting work of a scientist. Then, of course, we have all the scientists who don't deal with nature at all. So maybe I'd revise my statement and say that I see similarity between naturalists or biologists and poets, but not that much between poets and other scientists. I'm sure I'd find most of the actual work of science to be incredibly tedious, which is one reason I didn't follow my brothers into it.

Continuing this longer than necessary, I think of Thoreau, who would insist that his facts meant nothing in themselves, but were all inklings of some transcendent scheme of things that he could only sense at times. As he continued to gather facts more and more systematically, he began to lose his transcendental moorings and move into the role of scientific naturalist. He even complained about the loss of 'magic' that his altered attention caused him. Thoreau had two careers, as the author of the transcendentalist Walden and the scientist whose works such as The Succession of Forest Trees were perhaps the foundations of the science of ecology.

I might go for the big generalization here and say that poets are almost by definition transcendentalists. But maybe then I would just be talking about a certain variety of poet.

Oh, what's my example? I'll go with "Design," by Frost.

Design
by Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Off and on all day I've been looking at articles about the places that science and poetry intersect. Here is a mini and the link to the book reviews and finally, followed by the poem I liked best of today's reading.

http://www.americanscientist.org/booksh ... and-poetry

BOOK REVIEW
Science and Poetry

Anna Lena Phillips

Poetry and science go way back: Over the centuries, they have occasionally gotten together, like old friends who find themselves in the same city and meet up for tea, only to head home the next day and lose touch again. Much has changed since the two disciplines’ earlier encounters—which resulted, for instance, in late-1700s scientific treatises written in poetic form. Poets who investigate scientific concepts, and scientists tempted by verse, are now crafting work that invites readers into scientific cultures and bodies of knowledge even as it raises questions about the research enterprise. The six books reviewed in this issue—five poetry collections and one book of essays—are a sample of recent work in poetry that engages with scientific and mathematical constructs. At the end of the section, we present new poems from four poets whose work is informed by science.

Poetry in the Wild: Emily Grosholz reviews Approaching Ice, by Elizabeth Bradfield, and Darwin: A Life in Poems, by Ruth Padel.

Quantum Metaphors: Robin Chapman reviews Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, by Alice Major.

Querying Science: Rick Mullin reviews Hypotheticals, by Leigh Kotsilidis.

Songs of Scientists: Sarah Glaz reviews The Scientific Method, by Mary Alexandra Agner.

A Useful Pageant: Anna Lena Phillips reviews Between Page and Screen, by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse.

*
Projection, by Anna M. Evans

Mosquitoes, by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Baffle Gate, by Matthew Tierney



Holy Heathen Rhapsody,
by Pattiann Rogers

As if underwater, she floats and shimmies
slowly upward while the sun warms. She pauses
to sink again through the green and deeper
green garden leaves of this single tree,
its edifice all of Eden, heaven and earth,
slender branches bending and flowing
with the morning currents.

Summer lolls and mazes, a white-limbed
poplar, leafstalks, peel of scented bark.
Her body—seed wing or feather down, thread
slivers of silk—touches each curled lobe
and creviced branch as she passes, slides
underside, overside, along the ridges and furrows.
(Is that a tiny tongue finding the way?) Love
is this sun-holding tree of lapping leaves,
delves, canopies, a multi-tangled cover.

A spasm of breeze, the tree shivers, each leaf
twisting white flash / green shadow. By will
or wind, she moves stemward toward the steady
trunk, following fissure and tangent, rests
finally folded in a woody niche. Who could
know better? Regard the celestial; the sky
is not shelter.

Post poems in different places/rooms/doors.... I used to print out poems that inspire me and stick them on walls and stuff.

Today I am celebrating Poetry by discovering a poet new to me - Marie Howe. Read and listen:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/feature/ ... -howe/5316

The Gate

BY MARIE HOWE

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

If you want to listen to a wonderful interview with Marie Howe here is a link to Kista Tippett's interview on the radio show On Being:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/the-poet ... -howe/5301

During the interview Howe says that art captures the hard reality that we are simultaneously living and dying and poetry puts this into words so that we are not alone in our experience. I have always thought of poems as little bridges between minds.

Saffron wrote:

DWill wrote:

Saffron wrote:.
6. Buy a book of poetry for yourself! (I know which book I am going to buy)

Well...?

Since you asked - A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver.

Checked out the book and have changed my mind. I have purchased Marie Howe's new book instead - The Kingdom of Ordinary Time.