poem-a-day
Luna My Captive
Luna My Captive
And seriously now the guitar is beating me up It is shoving me into the narrow range of its cheerful melancholy And all sorts of feelings I want to have I cannot My feet start to move in exactly the same way They did for so many years each time I entered The tin shack where the dancing occurred Again I see you Luna just as I did When I was a boy once and everything Made a large kind of sense we were being guarded The new wave band with the exciting hair Produced inside us the same faint scent Of oranges that filled the patio in ancient holy Spain We read about in our textbooks We knew someday we would go Together there and feel our song In the narrow alleyways made sense We would sing it and drink each other’s blood Which would only make us grow stronger Sometimes we talked about just going to Panama To watch the ships move through the artificial scar Overlords made in earth to bring the goods we loved We put them in our mouths and on our record players Luna I am losing the red thread I want to rush back out into the street Away from this terrible guitar that is making me feel I’m just a chandelier in the reflections of my own Glass droplets quantifying what has passed Too enervated to keep toiling like a star Luna I don’t mean to say it’s all been a loss There was that class I took on how to ride The carousel holding my nephew But it’s impossible to be positive with this guitar playing There is something inside the tune I can’t alter and this man is singing All these songs about going there To be honest I just gave up and moved I hear my sister yelling in the yard Luna I’m going to bring my head outside To see if I can scare some crows They have bad manners not that I really care There are three of them right now Making me think of you and me and the other one The best evening of my life was when we parked Above that hill and talked all night About the things we would never do Until we grew dark and indifferent As a well in a ruined village The army passes by…
Copyright © 2018 by Matthew Zapruder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Copyright © 2018 by Matthew Zapruder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Tracy K. Smith
Classic Books of American Poetry
This collection of books showcases the masterpieces of American poetry that have influenced—or promise to influence—generations of poets. Take a look.
These Poems
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
whoever you are
whoever I may become.
Maya Angelou
Always on the Train
Writing poems about writing poems is like rolling bales of hay in Texas. Nothing but the horizon to stop you. But consider the railroad's edge of metal trash; bird perches, miles of telephone wires. What is so innocent as grazing cattle? If you think about it, it turns into words. Trash is so cheerful; flying up like grasshoppers in front of the reaper. The dust devil whirls it aloft; bronze candy wrappers, squares of clear plastic—windows on a house of air. Below the weedy edge in last year's mat, red and silver beer cans. In bits blown equally everywhere, the gaiety of flying paper and the black high flung patterns of flocking birds.
Like You
translated by Jack Hirschman
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
Como Tú
Yo, como tu,
amo el amor, la vida, el dulce encanto
de las cosas, el paisaje
celeste de los días de enero.
También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan, de todos.
Y que mis venas no terminan en mí
sino en la sange unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.
Poetic Forms
Refresh and expand your poetic vocabulary with this collection of poetic forms, complete with historical contexts, examples, and more. For more on poetic forms, browse our selection of terms from Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary or check out our quick teaching guide on essential poetic terms.
Jenny Xie
A Poet's Glossary
Read about poetic terms and forms from Edward Hirsch's A Poet's Glossary (Harcourt, 2014), a book ten years in the making that defines the art form of poetry.
Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman
Shane McCrae
Poetry Is a Destructive Force
That's what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing. It is a thing to have, A lion, an ox in his breast, To feel it breathing there. Corazon, stout dog, Young ox, bow-legged bear, He tastes its blood, not spit. He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own . . . The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.
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T. S. Eliot
2018 national poetry month sponsors
Lesson Plans for Introducing Poetry
Bring poems into the classroom with these lesson plans, which are especially suited to introducing students to poetry and helping them become engaged and thoughtful readers.
Hieu Minh Nguyen
