What Kind of Times Are These • National Poetry Month

A poem of resistance for Valerie, whose birthday is today, during National Poetry Month.

What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

By Adrienne Rich

From Collected Poems: 1950-2012

Courtesy The Poetry Foundation

Celebrating Duffy and Tartans During National Poetry Month

National Tartan Day is an annual American observance on April 6 commemorating the Scottish Declaration of Independence, upon which the American Declaration of Independence was modelled. It also recognizes achievements of Americans of Scottish descent. Enjoy this poem by Carol Ann Duffy, Scotland's first female poet laureate.


Havisham

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this

to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.

by Carol Ann Duffy
from New Selected Poems 1984-2004
courtesy Scottish Poetry Library

Filling Station • National Poetry Month

Click here to hear Elizabeth Bishop read this marvelous poem.

Filling Station

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

by Elizabeth Bishop
from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979
courtesy The Poetry Foundation

Freedom Candy • National Poetry Month

Freedom Candy

What kind of name is Omar?
I asked this new boy at school.
You named after a candy bar or what?
You know you’re too light to be milk chocolate. 

Omar looked at me and laughed.
Since that first smile, he’s my best friend.
Maybe my best friend ever.

Folks call us the inseparables
Like one of those old singing groups 
my daddy is always talking about. 

Omar is a muslim name Omar tells me.
I think it sounds like a candy bar.
Like O’Henry, Baby Ruth, Mars or Almond Joy.

Maybe his mamma should have named him
Snickers because of the way he laughs. 
Omar’s name sounds like candy
and the way he acts is sweet to me.

Every teacher except Mrs. Greenfield thinks so.
Mrs. Greenfield she don’t like Muslims.
and the rest of us she calls natural born sinners 
because of the way we talk and behave. 

Omar says, we should tell Mz. Greenfield 
about herself since it’s Black History Month.
So Omar stands up and says to Mrs. Greenfield:

How come you don’t lead us somewhere?
Why you not like Harriet Tubman?
Why no field trips? 
Why no trips to the museum or zoo?
Why we never go nowhere, why? 

Mrs. Greenfield, she don’t say nothing.
She just look at Omar as if he is the last Muslim 
on earth and is about to die.

I think about how Omar says Muslims pray 
five times a day and how cats have nine lives and 
just maybe Omar might make it to 3 o’clock
or maybe he won’t. 

Suddenly Mrs. Greenfield has one of those 
fainting spells like old Moses Tubman.
She has to sit down behind her desk so 
she tells me to go get her some water. 

I feel free as I race down the hall,
Wondering how Omar can be sweet sometimes
and get on everyone’s nerves the next. 

My daddy once told me M&Ms 
melt in your mouth and your hands.
especially if you colored.

Wait until I tell Omar.

by E. Ethelbert Miller  

from The 100 Best African American Poems 

After We Saw What There Was to See • National Poetry Month

After We Saw What There Was to See

After we saw what there was to see
we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father
waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need
a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.
Why do you want so much stuff?
he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear
my mother saying, as if that took care of it.

After she died I don’t think he felt any reason
to go back through all those postcards, not to mention
the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower
and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays
and lucite paperweights, everything we carried home
and found a place for, then put away
in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.

He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,
and when she was gone--why should that change?
Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?
I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler
in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.
It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,
lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.

by Lawrence Raab
courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

cuz he's black • National Poetry Month

Dirge Without Music • National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month! Is there a poem you'd like to see shared on this blog? Drop me a note and let me know, and enjoy this, the first of 30 days of poetry. Check back daily to get your daily dose of poetry!

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. 

by Edna St. Vincent Millay