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National Poetry Month Fun…AND…

Unfortunately, I haven’t written any more haiku since last week. I still plan to have 30 haiku by the end of the month, so I will hope to write some this weekend and all next week.

However, I thought today would be a good day to recap some of my favorite poetry books from this month, as well as some of the fantastic poetry posts I’ve seen this month.

I’ve been poking around the Internet this month, and I came across some great posts from participants in this year’s blog tour and on Twitter.  I thought this would be a great time to share them.

  1. Jeannine Hall Gailey recently interviewed Director of Sales and Marketing for Tupelo Press Marie Gauthier, who also is a poet and author of Hunger All Inside, about PR and poetry.  While there are a number of PR companies out there for fiction and nonfiction writers and many publishing houses have marketing campaigns in place, poets tend to be on their own in the abyss of the Internet and marketing their own books.  It’s one of the reasons I started Poetic Book Tours — I wanted to fill a niche for these poets.
  2. Jill at Rhapsody In Books is one of my favorite participants in the blog tour every year because she always has some great posts about song lyrics and poetry.
  3. Becca at I’m Lost in Books had a very insightful and personal story about poetry’s role in her life, and it was so moving, I had to highlight it here.
  4. Parrish Lantern had a fantastic post on Haiku this month, which I hope you will all read.
  5. I’ve participated in the Split This Rock! Festival a few times, and I was thrilled to read about Sarah Browning’s journey that landed her in the role of Executive Director; it’s an inspiring story about the power of the written word.

Here are my favorite poetry books from this month:

  1. Vessel by Parneshia Jones because I’m still thinking about identity and how we identify ourselves — our name, our family, our memories — and yet those things are as fleeting as the breeze in the grand scheme of things. The takeaway for me in this collection is that we should strive to make our mark by helping and affecting others lives in positive ways, weaving a larger “human quilt.”
  2. The Robot Scientist’s Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey because I’ve been fascinated with nuclear research for a long time, since I first studied WWII in high school. It’s awe inspiring how much the human mind can create and destroy all at once, developing something that can provide energy but that can also destroy us all at once and even gradually. There is so much in this collection to think about and reflect upon.
  3. Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust is a great collection of sonnets that outlines a pilgrim’s journey through the modern world, not unlike the journey Dante takes in the Divine Comedy.  While these poems are a classic form, these are so fresh that they are as unforgettable as the classic poets crafted.
  4. Banned for Life by Arlene Ang is another stunning collection of poems from a poet I found by accident long ago.  It is by turns morbid and dark, but there also is a beauty in death that she highlights with deft strokes.  Moments of comfort and moments of despair are treated in equal measure, just to remind us that we control how fulfilling those lives can be.

What do you notice about this list?  They are all women and they are all strong women talking about tough issues!  Have you read any great collections this month or even just come across some great poems?  I’d love to hear about them.

Comments

  1. bermudaonion(Kathy) says

    Jill always does a fabulous job, no matter what she writes about.

  2. Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) says

    If you count “Pride and Prejudice, Retold in Limericks,” then I guess I read some poetry this month! 🙂