Celebrating National Poetry Month 2023: 30 Days, 30 Poems

Today’s Poem

April 30, 2023

GABRIELLE CALVOCORESS

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At Last The New Arriving

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I’m never really sure how to end our 30 Days, 30 Poems celebration. Kicking it off with a poem about poetry makes a lot of sense. But ending it? That just doesn’t seem to have as logical a theme. Should it be something epic and well known? Should it be about endings? There’s just not a clear direction. I keep a list year-round, with poems and notes and suggestions and still find myself uncertain about the ending. In fact, tonight’s poem was a last minute deviation from my plan.

I started writing about the poem I’d planned to use and I realized that I was treating the poem in exactly the way I didn’t want 30 Days, 30 Poems to do. I don’t want 30 Days, 30 Poems to explain or interpret poems for you any more than is needed for our commentary. I want you to read the poems and understand them exactly where you are at, exactly in this moment. Even if that isn’t seeing some deeper, hidden meaning that we are assuming the poet was expressing.

Unless you’re the poet, or the poet told you so, the best you’re doing is guessing. You can’t know why I chose “green” instead of “verdant.” Maybe the “D” key on my computer was broken that day. Or maybe it was a choice I made on purpose to develop a rhythm, to make the poem take a certain shape or because when I read it aloud, I like the “n” sound better at the end than in the middle.

No. I want 30 Days, 30 Poems to be about you meeting the poems exactly where you are. You understand the poem exactly the way you are supposed to. Your feelings about each poem, love it or hate it, are exactly the right ones. A great poem is not great because some expert tells you it is but because of what it does, what it means to you. The lyrics of Grandmaster Flash or Bob Marley are just as great as Shakespeare, Keats or Yeats. Sometimes better.

The way you read a poem is just right.

I think, in my desire to find something “just right” to finish the month, I lost sight of that. I tried to write something about two other poems on my list. Two other poems I love. But tonight I couldn’t share them with you in a way that allowed you to experience the poem without my filters.

As I realized that for the second time, I went back to my list, determined to get out of the way this time. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I went back to the poem I’d thought about months ago as a final 30 Days, 30 Poems selection.

So. Let me get out of your way and let you find what you love in this poem, or any other, whether it’s one from our archives or something else completely different.

And while you find that poem that you fall in love with, let’s talk about this one.

I have been short on hope throughout this month, and have looked forward every day to 30 Days, 30 Poems, whether I was responsible for the poem that day or not. And I think that’s one of the things I love about poetry. The power it has to instantly change things. I knew every night that I’d either get to share a poem I love or read a poem precious to someone else. And that, I loved. Because it was about sharing the poems that matter, and that alone is a gift.

We’ve managed to cram love, sex, death, rape, racism, war, the feeling of not fitting in, and more into just a few lines each night. To be able to pull out that emotion in such a small space, that brings me joy. And to read this particular poem, to feel it transition from feelings of not fitting in to the amount of hope contained in this poem sends lightning from my feet throughout the rest of my body.

Sixteen lines. Not too difficult to memorize. And yet how much emotion is within those words? The poem glides between hope and reminiscence, with a touch of panic for good measure and arrives at ecstasy. There is pure love and joy exuding from those last two lines:

Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

Take that love, that joy into the world. You are loved. You are wonderful.

I read this, and in my head I hear the closing song from the movie Fame, which share its title, and some of its lyrics with a Walt Whitman poem:

And I’ll serenade Venus
I’ll serenade Mars
And I’ll burn with the fire
Of ten million stars
And in time and in time
We will all be stars

You are the stars. Shine brightly as you illuminate the orbit of others.

I am so glad you chose to share your time with us.

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