Celebrate Poetry Month with Random Acts of Poetry

This is Poetry Month

Has anybody noticed?

Clouds float by in a denim sky.

My sneakers hit the ground with the precise sound of nothing much.

Birds fly. People frequent the supermarket,

Fret about the economy, acne and rain.

Drops splatter the windows. The room is chill but cheery.

Here I sit with a book of poetry.

It flips open

and out leaps another

ecstasy.

by Tina Zubak

April is poetry month. I’m celebrating with random acts of poetry and you can too. I’m hanging poems around our Teen Area. You could read a poem or poetry book, write a poem or 28 poems. You can give them away. Find one you like or find many. Guys write and read poetry, too; it’s very macho.* Any girl would love a poem you wrote about her (provided it’s complimentary). The world is full of poetry.

Here are some books you might like:

 

 

LOVE: Selected Poems by e.e. cummings

Nobody writes more wondrous love poems than e.e. cummings. They are like spun silk or gossamer jewels. Christopher Myers annoints this book with collages and paintings that capture their sensuality.

 

 

* You Hear Me edited by Betsy Franco

Guys write about cars anger being a father having a father who doesn’t care divorce the ghetto AIDs girls drugs alienation hope.

19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye

Ms. Nye is a Palestinian American who grew up in the United States but writes movingly of the Middle East conflict and being an Arab American. Her poems about the soldiers, children, landscape and more personalize the war we’ve heard so much about. Also, don’t miss A Maze Me: Poems for Girls and other books by this author.

If you write poems - or fiction- or would like to, check out our Ralph Munn workshops and writing contest. Ask a Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh  librarian, or see our website at:

http://www.carnegielibrary.org/teens/library/special/CreativeWritingContest.html