Poem in Your Pocket: 7 Poems for National Poetry Month

The Academy of American Poets launched National Poetry Month in April 1996. The goal of National Poetry Month is to remind all that in a world awash in text, poetry matters. Every April since, poetry readers and nonreaders alike can’t help but notice poetry cropping up amongst the blooms of spring—poems suddenly adorning sandwich boards and subway cars, Instagram feeds, drivetime radio and especially in local library displays. This year, Off the Shelf invited four lovers of poetry to contribute a post for a Poem in Your Pocket series to gift our readers a new poem for every day of the week. Below is the first installment in this series. Check in every Friday for your next set of pocket poems!

"Ongoing" by Jenny Xie

Even for a poet, there is remarkable precision in Jenny Xie's control of language. Her poetry is rich with sharp images and emotions drawn in few words. The tight fragments that make up this poem, inventory the yearning and discovery, the wisdom found and reconsider, of early adulthood. A plaintive look back with a keen remind that life always carries on.

"Basket of Figs" by Ellen Bass

So much about this poem encapsulates the way poetry can stretch language, imbue it with new depths of feeling and complexity of expression. In its few stanzas it drips down the page, ignites the senses with its detail, delves into evocative ambiguity, then builds to a stunning and steamy resolution. Ellen Bass is a true master. 

"Let Me Try Again" by Javier Zamora

Many of Javier Zamora's poems recount his experience emigrating to the U.S. from his native El Salvador as an unaccompanied nine-year-old. They engage with issues of memory, racism, notions of home and family,  and the contradictions inherent to the American dream. The complicated acts of kindness at the heart of this poem, highlight the cognitive dissonances brought on by the creation of borders and the often-unjust politics that surround them.  

"In Perpetual Spring" by Amy Gerstler

April means National Poetry Month but it also means Spring. A time to emerge and reconnect with the outside world. This poem, by the eminent Amy Gerstler, describes a surprisingly profound sense of peace brought on by taking a moment to contemplate her garden. It both beautifully illustrates the meditative intricacy in her poetry and serves as a lovely reminder that hope can be found in unexpected places.

"Straight, No Chaser" by John Keene

Author, translator, and academic John Keene is a creative and intellectual marvel. His work never stands in one place, deftly traversing histories, identities, style, and modes. This tender poem depicting the wait to meet up with a lover, uses sensory details to punctuate the feeling of anticipation. It plays with the way surroundings interacting with memory, and how personal histories specify, yet universalizes, our experience of desire. 

"Fragments for Subduing The Silence" by Alejandra Pizarnik

I personally love poems about language. Ones that struggle with its inadequacies, wrestle meaning from the gaps it opens. Much of the vivid darkly surreal work of tragically short-lived Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, channels that tension with such power.  In the poem presented here, she feverishly building up a series of visceral images, in attempt to pacify the dread lurking beneath silence, and finds, in the frustration to express herself, a beautiful perseverance.

"Baked Goods" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

What more sensuous experience is there than preparing food? The smells, the heat, the mess, the joy of sharing the process and the fruits. With touching warmth, that doesn’t fail to let a little darkness nibble at the edges, Aimee Nezhukumatathil shares a glimpse into the chaotic bliss of her kitchen, and the love it helps sustain.   

 

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Brian Muldoon is the Children’s Librarian at the Clinton Hill branch. He has served multiple years on the Brooklyn Book Prize Committee and jumps at the chance to share poems and stories with patrons of all ages.