Poetry Month

WOW @ The Library: Celebrating a Centennial of Women’s Poetry

April is poetry month! “What is poetry?.” Is poetry perhaps a garden of expressions blooming in the light of thoughtful thoughts? Wonderful words dancing to the rhythm of rhymes? or Sweet tweets that spring from swayable heartbeats? 

According to Edmond Holmes, “Poetry is the expression of strong and deep feeling.” 

But, anyway that poetry may be interpreted, this short selection of poetic works written by and about women, including Pulitzer Prize 

April 2011 marks the 16th anniversary of National Poetry Month, and we shall embark on this sweet 16 with an appreciation of everyone's favorite Sufi mystical poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, otherwise known as Rumi (1207 - 1273 AD). Born in a remote Persian village in the region now known as Tajikistan, Rumi wrote poems of longing and ecstacy that made sweeping parallels between romantic and spiritual love. He was particularly fascinated with the use of music, dance, and poetry as the means for acheiving communion with the divine. We will discuss the following poem, which is a translation by Coleman Barks. Translated versions of poetry may risk appearing as a 

For the month of December, the librarians of The Reader's Den have decided to spotlight some of our very favorite poetry. To get things started, I'd like to take a look at the poem "Learning to Love America" by Shirley Geok-Lim Lin. You can read this and many other great poetry selections at The Poetry Foundation's website. Be sure to reserve and/or check of the other works by Shirley Geok-Lim Lin available through the library.

"Learning to Love America" (from What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say) by Shirley Geok-Lim Lin (b. 1944, Malacca, Malaysia)

Verse courtesy of the teen book group at Jefferson Market.

Last week in the Reader's Den I shared a library poem by modern New York poet Puma Perl. This week I found a library poem by the immortal Emily Dickinson. She writes of an intimate encounter with an antique volume, and how it transports her.

Poetry Month is here at last: a yearly breath of fresh air and inspiration. Some people find inspiration in nature, others find it in a library. This month in the Reader's Den we'll be looking at the poetry of places, and we begin with a poem by a New York City poet named Puma Perl. Much to the delight of library staff, she found inspiration within the walls of the Mulberry Street branch. She shared this poem, written in July 2008, in anticipation of her reading at Mulberry Street on April 14. Thanks Puma Perl!

NYPL and CLMP will kick off a new season of Periodically Speaking next Tuesday with a new format and we hope you'll join us.  It's been 5 years since we began Periodically Speaking, and to celebrate we'll be launching something different for 2010.  It'll be one journal, an editor and several poets in brief readings and discussions.  The original ideas behind PS are the same; showcasing the Library's great literary magazine collection in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room and providing an opportunity for emerging writers to present their work.

Final Week of National Poetry Month

Reader’s Den friends, we’ve come to the fourth and final installment of our month-long celebration of verse. I give you a poem from fellow New Yorker Don Marquis, originally published in 1915. Check out discussion questions after the break, and post comments!

Week 3 of National Poetry Month

To a “Friend”? Are you sure he/she is just a friend, Ms. Lowell?

This week The Reader’s Den offers up an Amy Lowell sonnet, originally published in the year 1912. Check out discussion questions after the break, and post a comment if the spirit moves you!

The Reader’s Den is NYPL’s online book discussion forum, but during the month of April, we’re all about poetry. This week’s poem, "City Visions," was chosen with a view to celebrating Immigrant Heritage Week, which starts April 17. It was written by the same poet whose words grace the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses…”).

City Visions by Emma Lazarus

I.

Color Prints of the Thirty-six Immortal Woman
Poets (1801) A work of art has often inspired a poem, like The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, which sparked Anne Sexton’s poem of the same name; and likewise, a poem can inspire an artwork, as with Charles Demuth’s The Figure 5 in Gold, motivated by William Carlos Williams’ poem The Great Figure.

But, it is often the case that the artist and the poet are the same person. A few artist/poets of variety include William Blake, Marsden Hartley, Francis Picabia, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Chinese painters of the Song 

In celebration of National Poetry Month the Jefferson Market Library will be hosting the 17th Annual Poets House Showcase Saturday April 4 through Saturday April 11, 2009.

The only event of its kind, the annual Poets House Showcase is a free exhibit featuring all of the new poetry books and poetry-related texts published in the United States in a single year—with more than 2,000 titles on view (including volumes by individual authors, anthologies, biographies, critical studies, CDs and DVDs) from over 500 commercial, university and independent presses. The Showcase provides writers, readers and publishers with a fascinating vantage point from which to assess publishing and 

New Yorkers are celebrating poetry in a big way – For today, April 17th, is Poem In Your Pocket Day! For the next twenty-four hours, all New Yorkers are encouraged to put poems in their pockets – and post their original poems to the NYPL blog. There are events happening all day, and even the mayor's participating (no kidding!):

PRESS CONFERENCE
by Michael Bloomberg
 
Pardon me, sir, I’ve a question or two …
     You.
Sir, you said poetry is a delight…
     Right.
Reading it makes you smarter, more 

Write a poem right away –
Thursday’s Poem In Your Pocket Day!

Read below for a fine first line,
And rewrite a classic for modern times.

It’s an easy project all you writing friends,
So let us begin in order to reach the end…

Thursday, April 17, 2008 will be the sixth annual Poem In Your Pocket day in New York City, and this year, the Mayor's Office is working with the Poetry Society of America to bring the John Waldman Writing Project to New York City. We've offered up the NYPL blog as a space for everyone to participate, so if you want to write