Screenshot on Thursday, April 12 at 4:12 am
April is my favorite month of the year because I celebrate my birthday. When I lived in North Carolina, I was known to take 2-10 days off and plan something grand like skydiving or hiking through three National Parks in Utah. Now that I work at a college, my birthday falls in the second half of the semester where we rush to get everything done before students and faculty scatter across the world for the summer. I can’t take vacation like before, but I can still celebrate all month. For my birthday, people were kind enough to buy me dinner, cook for me, join me at a Celtics game, dance with me, send me lovely cards & gifts, and wish me well via phone calls, Facebook messages, and texts.
That April is also National Poetry Month probably means I was destined to be a poet. It’s been great to share a photo of a poem that I love every day. People are being introduced to and reacquainted with the poems and poets that have touched me over the years. As the NYT article on Tracy K. Smith implies, poetry can certainly be the cure that ails us at this moment.
Here are the next 7 poems:
Day 9: A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay
Day 10: Waiting by Yevgeny Yuvtushenko
Day 11: Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay
Day 12: Twenty Questions for Black Professionals by Pamela Taylor
Day 13: For Grace, After a Party by Frank O’Hara
Day 14: Angina Pectoris by Nazim Hikmet
Day 15: I, Too by Langston Hughes
A Poet's Double Life 