April

As Lin reminded me, April is National Poetry Month in the U.S.. Poets.org hosts a Poem-A-Day email for the duration of April, all the poems they send have been published within the last year. The sign-up page is here. Publisher Knoph also sends out a poem from their collection every weekday. The sign-up page is here.

This seems like a poem an English teacher would show her class to explain poetry, but hey, it's Poetry Month:

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.