National Poetry Month Wrap-Up

April 28, 2024

On World Poetry Day, we asked for your favorite line(s) of poetry and said we’d compile them. In honor National Poetry Month, which wraps up tomorrow, here’s the compiled piece we’ve woven into a single work just for fun. The selections ranged eras, tones and topic.

Thank you to Facebook Followers for sharing their favorites: Baltimore Hon Hive, Mary Mencarini Campbell, Susan Parker Coleman, Wayne Drozynski, William Derge, Tara A. O’Brien Elliott, Fred Fox, Sarah Hartwick, Michelle Kreiner, Suzy Mazer, and Aravinda Pillalamarri,  


Every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.

I mean, I am in my country, watching my country burn, because of my country.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

How little we know,
and when we know it

I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

You do not have to be good

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay

 Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.

**
Poems (in order):

“won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton; “When They Say Pledge Allegiance, I Say” by Hala Alyan; Hamlet by William Shakespeare; “Like a Sentence” by John Asbery; “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” by Nikki Giovanni; “Jabberwocky” (in Through the Looking-Glass) by Lewis Carroll; “The Pasture” by Robert Frost; “The Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver; “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth; “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost; “The Purple Cow” by Gelett Burgess; and “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.

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