National Poetry Month

So usually I don’t get much into this month or that month, but for years National Poetry Month has been my exception.  As someone who has an intense love/hate relationship with poetry, I love love love seeing various people and publishers all over the web show forth what they think a good poem is.  I find a lot of new poets to enjoy – much more reliable for me than trying to dig up poets I haven’t read yet, but love, on my own.  The only better way I’ve ever found is to take 3 or 4 hours in the humanities reading room at McGill ¹, and browse through several dozen current literary journals (Brick was always a favorite of mine) … and that is a lot more work than it used to be, PLUS it leaves out anyone who is dead or not likely to publish in a literary journal.

Today’s new-to-me discovery (thanks to Knopf’s lovely poem-a-day tumblr and email service) is Vera Pavlova.  Particularly #36 from If There Is Something to Desire, which begins:

To converse with the greats
by tying their blindfolds on;

and, I think, just gets better from there.  Judge for yourself.

1. have tried it at other universities. not replicable so far