April is National Poetry Month

The Academy of American Poets in 1996 started National Poetry Month in April.  In the years following it has become a literacy celebration in the world with libraries, schools, publishers and poets helping celebrate poetry's vital place in culture.

For more information, check out the links below:

Academy of American Poets
NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English
Poetry Foundation
'Poetry lives everywhere':  NPR kicks off National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month 2018 | NetGalley

Enjoy this poem ---

It’s all I have to bring today

Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

National Poetry Month and National Library Week

Poetry and Libraries --- I think I see a connection --- do you, I hope so because I am going to use the two for this blog entry! Okay, here goes:

Books, books again, and books once more!
There are our theme, which some miscall
Mere madness, setting little store
By copies either short or tall.
But you, O slaves of shelf and stall!
We rather write for you that hold
Patched folios dear, and prize "the small,
Rare volume, black with tarnished gold."
~ Austin Dobin

Going to the Library
By Jessy Randall

In the library there are pathways
you follow to find out what you want to know --
imagine - somewhere in all these books
or on the face of the computer or in parentheses
at the back of a magazine, there is
the perfect sentence, the answer to your question,
the words all around you like
the tornado in the Wizard of Oz never
go home Dorothy -- Dorothy, never land --
language can be your bed, the
beautiful wonder of all possible poems.

Poem
My Library
By Varda One

It's only a room with shelves and books,
but it's far more magical than it looks

It's a jet on which I soar
to lands that exist no more.

Or a key with which I find
answers to questions crowding my mind.

Building my habit of learning and growing,
asking and researching till I reach knowing.

Here, I've been a mermaid and an elf
I've even learned to be more myself.

I think that I shall never see
a place that's been more useful to me.

With encouraging kind friends with wit
Who tell me to dream big and never quit.

It's only a room with shelves and books,
but it's far more magical than it looks.

WOW ---- stirring words ---- when are you coming in? Happy National Poetry Month and Happy National Library Week! Hurray for both!