No National Poetry Month list of poems would be complete without an example of the Mother of all poetic forms, the sonnet. An enduring form of Italian Renaissance pedigree, the sonnet mainly requires two things: 1) fourteen lines, and 2) a volta, or a turn, some moment where the poem suddenly shifts, sharpens, or reverses. Here’s a contemporary example from an electrifying poet, Terrance Hayes. He wrote a whole book called American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin in response to the Trump presidency, and here’s a video of the best sonnets from that book: