How to Make the Most of National Poetry Month

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In my 2022-2023 planner, during this week which is my Spring Break, I wrote in all capital letters: START LIVING MY BEST WRITING LIFE! What better time to start than during National Poetry Month?

Monday, I went to Barnes and Noble and wrote about 700 words! Honestly, I think writing in coffee shops is really going to help my writing life, writing schedule, and writing process. Sitting inside my rental does nothing for my mental health, and that in turn impacts my creative health. Also, I think now is a good time to mention that I’ve queried 35 agents and been rejected by 6. I’ve never been good with numbers, but the odds might still be in my favor? Maybe?

So every Monday, I’m going to visit a bookstore and/or café to get some serious writing done.

Side note: I’d been craving a blueberry scone for weeks. The Starbucks inside the Barnes & Noble did not disappoint.

Since I was in a bookstore, and since it is National Poetry Month, I purchased two books: How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch and The FSG Poetry Anthology, edited by Jonathan Galassi & Robyn Creswell. I’m reading and annotating, hoping it will not only impact my creative life, but my professional life as well. I want to study more poetry in my English classes and if I end up teaching creative writing again, the poetry unit will not doubt be positively affected and expanded.

What else can you do to celebrate National Poetry Month?

This website has some great ideas:

Write poetry daily

This is exactly what I did last year; I posted them on Instagram. It was a lot of fun!
Arrange or attend a poetry event

I’ve been DYING to go to in-person literary events, and a poetry-related one would be fantastic. I need to do some research …
Rediscover famous poets

Hence why I purchased the poetry anthology. Also, the website suggests specifically exploring poets who are nearly forgotten, which is a beautiful sentiment, I think.In Closing

Here’s one of my all-time favorite poems

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

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