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National Poetry Month, a celebration of poetry which takes place each April, was introduced in 1996 and is organized by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States.

National Poetry Month #10

David Bottoms

Photo from GSU’s College of Arts & Sciences 

Now we turn to one of GSU’s very own poets, and a former poet laureate of Georgia, Dr. David Bottoms. “Under the Vulture-Tree” is a consummate David Bottoms poem, filled with vivid detail from the natural world that pushes the reader, and the speaker of the poem, into what Bottoms calls a “deep hidden meaning,” some truth we have to quiet the mind to hear:

From the New Georgia Encyclopedia

David Bottoms, Georgia’s poet laureate from 2000 to 2012, reads his poem “Under the Vulture Tree” from the book (1987).

Video by Darby Carl Sanders, New Georgia Encyclopedia

National Poetry Month #9

Elizabeth Bishop

Photo from WikiCommons under Public Domain

Today, how about a good old villanelle? What’s a villanelle, you ask? Suffice it to say that it’s a French verse form that uses two repeating lines throughout the poem and lots of rhyme. Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” in addition to being a villanelle, is also an ars poetica, or, a poem about the making of poetry. Even though it’s 50 years old, it still slaps (and sings):  

National Poetry Month #7

Yusef Komunyakaa

Photo by Wikimedia Creative Commons

Today, we give praise to drums! Yusef Komunyakaa is a titan of American poetry, best known for his poems about The Vietnam War. This poem, “Ode to the Drum,” is about a drum, yes, but it’s also about the transformative power of all art. It’s simply stunning:

Ode To The Drum

Gazelle, I killed you
for your skin’s exquisite
touch, for how easy it is
to be nailed to a board
weathered raw as white
butcher paper. Last night
I heard my daughter praying
for the meat here at my feet.
You know it wasn’t anger
that made me stop my heart
till the hammer fell. Weeks
ago, I broke you as a woman
once shattered me into a song
beneath her weight, before
you slouched into that
grassy hush. But now
I’m tightening lashes,
shaping hide as if around
a ribcage, stretched
like five bowstrings.
Ghosts cannot slip back
inside the body’s drum.
You’ve been seasoned
by wind, dusk & sunlight.
Pressure can make everything
whole again, brass nails
tacked into the ebony wood
your face has been carved
five times. I have to drive
trouble from the valley.
Trouble in the hills.
Trouble on the river
too. There’s no kola nut,
palm wine, fish, salt,
or calabash. Kadoom.
Kadoom. Kadoom. Ka-
doooom. Kadoom. Now
I have beaten a song back into you,
rise & walk away like a panther.

Listen

National Poetry Month #6

Sylvia Plath

Image from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

We start this week off with one of the most anthologized poems of the English language, by one of the most haunting and tragic poets of all time. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath is a dramatic monologue that shows the speaker wrestling with the memory of her dead father.

Plath’s reading of the poem will send chills down your spine: 

National Poetry Month #2

James Arlington Wright

For day two of the “cruellest month,” here’s a self-deprecating stunner from one of America’s greatest poets of the mid-20th Century, James Wright: “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”