Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend and another visit with the Sunday Salon crowd. Today I just want to encourage you to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Read a poem, write a poem or you visit any of these links to find out more about poets and poetry:
- The Best Words in their Order is the blog of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Borzoi Reader will send you a daily poem
- Poetry Foundation offers poems daily via their podcast.
I’m ready to celebrate, I’ve got Poetry Speaks Expanded to listen to while I do some bookbinding today. If you’ve got some great links for poetry please share them.
But, speaking of bookbinding, I went to Paper Arts yesterday to look for decorative paper for a project I’m working on and later in the day when I was back home and relaxing with Leonardo’s Shadow I read a passage that totally made me smile. Giacomo, Leonardo Da Vinci’s servant, goes to the paper merchant.
“The door is open and inside there is paper, paper, paper everywhere! White, green, gray, yellow, light blue. Parchments, all types. Boards, bindings, blocks, and bookmaking materials. The shop has clean white walls, and the large front windows let in plenty of light. Oh, it is a marvelous sight! The shelves are stacked high with clean, fresh, fragrant, inviting paper!”
That was me earlier at Paper Arts. I didn’t need another reason to like this book even more, but I like that Giacomo and I can both get carried away by the sight of beautiful papers. This book has been a delight so far and I hope to spend a bit more time with it today.
I’ve been enjoying more poetry lately, without knowing it was Poetry Month! How nice! I recommend Elizabeth Bishop, who I’ve recently come across, and I really like Sophie Hannah and (just of late) Anne Sexton. Makes me feel I want to branch out and read more poets.
My husband LOVES poetry. I’ll pass on the links to him. Enjoy your Sunday bookbinding!
Love the shout out to National Poetry Month. This is a month that I have been celebrating with friends and family via email for the last decade or so. I have always loved poetry and love sharing that love with others and NPM gives me a great opportunity to do so. I celebrate the month by sending out a poem a day to my nearest and dearest. I love searching for new and interesting poems and poets to share with them throughout the month.
litlove – I love “discovering” new poets too. I’ve only read a little bit of Elizabeth Bishop and what I’ve read so far I’ve liked a lot. I try to read a bit of poetry here and there but it’s nice that there’s such a focus in April for poetry month. Reminds me to read poetry more often 🙂
J.Kaye – Hope he enjoys them! I really like the podcasts because poetry is one of those things that is just wonderful to hear being read.
Irish – Wow, I bet your family and friends love that! I do sign up for the poem emails a day and it’s so nice to start off your day with some good words isn’t it? Happy NPM!
I’ve really enjoyed the Life/Lines feature over at poets.org, where regular people wrote about their favorite lines of poetry and what they meant to them. I found it really moving.
It’s here:
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/339
Also, as a kind of different way to celebrate poetry, I love the cd ‘Eddi Reader Sings The Songs of Robert Burns. Her voice is amazing. There is a great clip on YouTube of her doing ‘My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXH9DVS76yM
Happy National Poetry Month, everyone. This is my first time commenting but I love your blog, bookgirl.
Thanks for reminding me about this. I meant to do something about it last week and forgot. Given the mud that’s a round after this morning’s snow I know just the e.e.cummings to celebrate with.
A friend of mine is passing along her copy of Bell Jar to me by Sylvia Plath and so I’ve been reading some of her poetry recently. I don’t read a lot of poetry, I’m afraid. I like the sound of it, but often times the deeper meanings go right over my head.
If you’d like to celebrate NPM a little more, I’ve got a contest going on my blog!
I was SO CLOSE to buying a complete collection of Anne Sexton’s poems this morning, but I decided to be good and save the $$$. Somehow I think I’ll end up going back before National Poetry Month is over, though. Yay for poetry!
Greer – Thank you for stopping by and love the links! I always forget about YouTube and I bet now there are probably a lot of poetry readings and such on there. I must scope it out! Happy NPM to you too 🙂
Ann Darnton – Let me guess… In just right? When the world is puddle-wonderful? I love that. Hope you’ve enjoyed the snowy day you had!
Literary Feline – I’ve not read much by Sylvia Plath but The Bell Jar is fantastic. I hope you will like reading that one.
SmallWorld – Did you say contest? Gotta come visit 🙂
Andi – See, that would be a perfect way to celebrate NPM! Gotta do it 🙂
That description of the paper store…flawless! I love that.
When I read that passage you quoted, I could just imagine how well that described you in the paper store! I adore beautiful papers too, but have very little idea what to do with them – so I just look and admire 🙂
I’ve been dabbling a bit in poetry over the past year. One of the contemporary poets I really like is Mary Oliver. Another is Billy Collins.
Mrs. B – Isn’t it lovely? Paper stores are another of my weaknesses 🙂
ravenous reader – I love touching the papers too! Ha,ha… Oh, I love Billy Collins’ poetry. It is so accessible, sometimes funny and of course always makes you think.
I always turn to poetry when I need to be inspired or feel a little weary. I can always find words or a passage that somehow puts things into perspective or makes me feel as though there is another soul who can understand my deeper thoughts or feelings. I love poetry month!