Check back here every day of National Poetry Month (April 2026) to fall in love with a new poem!
April 16
The Yoke by Frank Bidart
don't worry I know you're dead
but tonight
turn your face again
toward me
Some poems clearly feel worked on. Others feel like they flowed out of the author’s pen almost faster than the ink itself. This one… I know is one of the former. I know because the poetry professor I learned it from was personally acquainted with Frank Bidart and his process is unusually fastidious–review after review, correction after correction. But the poem; considering how many revisions it’s gone through, shouldn’t the finished feel tough like overworked dough? It doesn’t. It feels delicate and improvisational. It captures in a handful of words how hard it is to lose someone. How all the old neural pathways are still active. You expect to see their face, hear their voice. You think “maybe I’ll call them” you wish you could go for a visit.
I learned this poem from my late beloved professor Saskia Hamilton. She died of cancer a few years ago. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Every time I read or write something I like I want to run it by her; talk it over with her. Every time. Yes really. Every time. It’s like a… thing around my neck that I can’t take off that’s attached to something I am constantly dragging behind me.
-Adam
April 14
Song for the Luddites by Lord Byron
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
I don’t especially like Byron. But he’s here as a representative of his era. You cannot dispute that Byron was the Taylor Swift of his era; someone whose art and social life were equally the stuff of pop legend. You may want to dispute it given that Byron was a serial sex criminal. But those are the levels of fame and influence we’re talking about.
Byron was a romantic first and foremost. He loved to get involved in causes. His taking up the cause of the Luddites reminds me of some of the celebrity activists of our own day (particularly the ones who turn out to be sex-pests).
I am not posting this because it’s deep poetry; or because Byron’s take is unique. But in the current age the stories of the men and women who took up arms against being mechanized out of a job has again taken center-stage. So I thought it would be interesting to see their precursors.
-Adam
April 13
The Unforeseeable Fate of Mr Jones by Foster the People
I've got the wild inside to conquer
And then I'll be free. If I was free, if I was free
I would fly between the moons of consciousness
And ride on the back of a shooting star
And float into your arms
Blossom Akpojisheri recommended this song by Foster the People. There is something so beautiful about the combination of the mundane and the sublime in this song. Look at this lyric. “Conquer” the “wild inside” and then “be free” but being “free” looks, from the outside, wilder than anything. This is honestly what ADHD feels like–if we could just conquer the wild inside then we could do much wilder things but on the days we can’t then we end up staying home and rocking back and forth
-Adam
April 12
Untitled by John Compton
the vulture eats the deer;
the head is already gone.
the red beak & black wings
flash by my peripheral.
John Compton is one of the few people on this list I know personally. This poem has a rhythm to it caused by the alternating bits of visceral and sophisticated language. Does the word “peripheral” belong in a poem about vultures eating dead flesh? Why not, given that it’s a poem about, among other things, how ideas are born; how hope gets worn down but then recycled; how time can both hurt and heal. A lot of those complex, cyclical processes are “peripheral” to human observation. A lot of how they happen is “singular.” And a lot of the worry and strain and anxiety makes me want to kick back and “wear intestines like a medallion.”
-Adam
April 9
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
It’s my favorite for a few reasons.
One, I love the way Poe used verse to express an all consuming grief. It’s hard to express grief, and he did so in a healthy way. I commend that as a former social worker and as someone who has experienced profound grief.
Two, the way he spoke of a cloud coming and chilling her, taking her away, is a beautiful and haunting way to talk about illness killing a beloved.
Three, if I’m not mistaken, it was his final poem. I first read this poem in middle school, and it really spoke to me. The atmosphere created by his words is just a chef’s kiss.
-AJ Weeks
Note: It was indeed his last poem and you can see in an image from the Library of Congress that the poem was first printed as part of Poe’s obituary. -Ed.
April 8
The Applicant by Sylvia Plath
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Sylvia wrote this after her husband, Ted Hughes, abandoned her and their children. And the poem perfectly illustrates the wound that he left behind. But it’s not just him the poem is critiquing, but also society as a whole. In a world where women are treated as objects, the poem is horrifying in its message as Sylvia pokes holes in the belief that women are things; empty vessels to be acquired and thrown away when they’re no longer useful. And that men are incomplete without a wife whose job it is to complete him.
-Jayce
April 7
There Will Come Soft Rains by Sarah Teasdale
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
If it feels a bit on the nose to post a poem about the human race being sundered by endless war, written by a woman who took her own life in the interregnum between the two world wars… it is. I’m not feeling like much for subtlety today.
What I find particularly impressive about the poem is when it was published: 1920. After the “Great War,” before it was unceremoniously renamed to “World War I” and, more importantly, before J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller and the circulation of Richard Feynman’s autobiography to put a human face on a thing that could end humanity. This woman in her thirties from New York who favored the blouses and skirts of the upper crust. It’s a beautiful poem–restrained yet emotional. I think the reason we keep coming back to it; or the reason I do anyway is that it captures the feeling of helplessness. And in doing so points to a way forward. Seek nature. Do what you can. Make what stand you can against the darkness. And use your voice.
-Adam
April 6
Vibranium by Jamie Legaspi
The Agusan image weighs four-point-four pounds, the Internet corrects.
But I shrug off the decimal.
How much more is that not-quite-half-pound,
To someone who makes minimum wage?
With her powerful verse, Jamie laments the continued losses due to colonial violence. For all the Filipino diaspora is one of the largest in the world, our stories are relatively unknown, including the damage colonialism wrought in the past and present as well.
The piece isn’t lighthearted because it’s not a lighthearted subject. Yet it partakes of literary devices that often appear lighthearted–humor, imagined conversations with Gods, scenes borrowed from super hero movies. Jamie’s writing, about being torn between fantastical conversations with Gods and the practicalities faced by a person too poor to afford what passes for justice in a corrupt system, speaks to an ache that many of us feel.
-Jayce
April 5
The Lamb by William Blake
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead...
“The Lamb” is a short, but whimsical, poem from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. It captures the feeling of child’s flights of fancy, especially regarding how Christianity is taught to children. The child in the poem is reciting the first line of the catechism to a local farm animal, and trying in a small way to connect its abstract teaching to something the child knows about.
As today happens to be Easter, I chose it because it captures the delicate side of the holiday, the part that draws people in and paints a picture of love and light. The holidays are a difficult time for many people; but sometimes we are allowed to have nice things.
-Jayce
April 4
I Shall Forget you Presently My Dear by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.
It seems like everyone loves the joyful fun poems of ESVM: “We were very tired and we were very merry…” “My candle burns at both ends…” So many of her poems are about that burst of joy during or right after a moment of passion, of creative inspiration. But she also has this other type of poem: what I would call the “sunday morning coming down” after the passion of her better-known work.
-Adam
April 3
All the Aphrodisiacs by Cathy Park Hong
strips of white cotton I use to bind your wrist to post, tight
enough to swell vein, allow sweat—
sweat to sully the white of your sibilant body,
the shrug of my tongue, the shrug of command
My mom is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; I once described my English PhD to her as “psychoanalyzing dead people.” I do mostly read the works of dead people: Homer, Shakespeare, Rabindranath Tagore… but there is a real pleasure to checking in with a poet every so often; growing up with them; growing old with them. I first encountered Cathy Park Hong in college. I actually introduced her when she won the Ruth Lilly prize. I remember she thanked me for my introduction, though, frankly, the whole event is a bit of a blur. I still have the signed advanced proof. I’m willing to entertain offers of a million USD or more.
Cathy Park Hong is, fundamentally, a person who loves to play with language. You can imagine her as a child in a bath surrounded by floating alphabet blocks, endlessly rearranging. Consider these lines:
you say it turns you on when I speak Korean.
The gold paste of afterbirth, no red—
Household phrases —pae-go-p’a (I am hungry)
—ch’i-wa (Clean up)
—kae sekki (Son of a dog)
I breathe those words in your ear, which make you climax;
afterwards you ask me for their translations. I tell you it’s a secret.
Yes it’s funny. Yes it’s charming. Yes it’s the sort of thing we all joke about in multilingual relationships. But I believe that it’s not just about being funny or charming. If it were, what’s that extra line doing in there: “The gold paste of afterbirth, no red–”
If it were just funny that line wouldn’t be there. The mystery of language is not reducible to a joke or a bit. Nor is the mystery of lovemaking. I expect I will continue to check in with CPH’s poetry. She is one of the few truly funny poets whose poetry elevates the humor and whose humor elevates the poetry.
-Adam
April 2
La aurora de Nueva York by Federico Garcia Lorca
Dawn over New York brings
Four columns of ash
And a hurricane of black pigeons
That churn the gutter water
I don’t know what to say except I’ve always loved this poem. In an era overridden by GenAI nonsense, it is refreshing in a way to be able to look at a poem that has such respect for the reader’s imagination; for the reader’s willingness to imagine a complex, impossible image and hold it in their mind and engage with it on an emotional level. It’s a workout for the mind and the heart and the emotions to read Lorca. Leonard Cohen thought so, and so did Flamenco legend Enrique Morente. And so do I. And so will you.
Lorca’s poetry is tied to his politics. He was a queer man living in a repressive society, allying himself with the communist revolution. A lot of his main characters–Adela from the House of Bernarda Alba most famously–are stuck. They indulge in forbidden love and society judges and destroys them. It would be really nice to say the times we live in are more free and more wise; that Lorca no longer speaks to us directly but rather as a relic of an older era. I would like to be able to say that.
The above translation is mine.
-Adam
April 1
Aristotle’s Poetics
“The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; character holds the second place.”
(Ed Note: It is our tradition to begin our National Poetry Celebration with a poem about poetry. Granted this is a work of Philosophy. Please check back every day this month for more favorite poems. Sometimes our reflection will be short; sometimes long. We especially encourage you to submit your own! What is your favorite poem, and why? Submit your ideas to us through our facebook page)
I know better than to start with Aristotle. He is arcane and difficult to understand and so frequently incorrect about basic points of physics and biology that you have to wonder if he ever set foot outside his own door. People in my friend group often roll their eyes when I start talking about works of literature published more than two thousand years ago. But. One thing Aristotle said came back to me while I was recounting the story of the Iliad for a friend who was raised rather in the tradition of the Mahabharat and Ramayan than in the Greek myths. This is not a contrived example and is in fact a normal thing to have happen to me.
It started innocently enough: he asked what my favorite book was. I said… It’s probably the Iliad. He was unfamiliar and asked for the story. I told him about how the Trojan war started with a member of one royal house kidnapping a woman who was part of another royal house; and the Iliad starts the same way: With the overlord of the Greeks, Agamemnon, stealing Briseis, whom Achilles of Phthia won as a prize of war. That part has aged worse than Agatha Christie.
Achilles is half god and half human. He tries to respond to the situation as a good would: by withdrawing his help from the humans he has been allied to so that they perish en masse. But he’s not a god; not quite. So as they humans die around him he develops a conscience. That’s what leads him to let his hetero life mate Patroklos to enter the combat in the glorious armor of Achilles… armor that doesn’t save him from the Trojan heroes Hektor and Sarpedon.
This book was written 28 centuries ago and yet the narrator takes the time to emphasize that Hektor commits a cowardly act–not a brave one–by agreeing to face Achilles in single combat. Hektor knows he is going to die. He remains outside the walls of the city because he cannot bear to face his people’s scorn if he should retreat. Imagine if that’s the moment people remembered instead of the Achilles’ heel nonsense that’s not even in the text. Imagine if a soldier deciding to offer his life for his country were met with that response: what a coward. He didn’t have the courage to flee like a sensible person and take his well-deserved lumps for getting himself into an unwinnable situation in the first place. It would be a different world.
Achilles is still caught in his mental trap though. He still responds like a god. After he fights and kills Hektor, he tries to do what a god would do: to judge the dead. So he mutilates Hektor’s body and refuses Hektor’s parents the simple solace of a funeral.
But again Achilles is not a god. So the depredations he visits on Hektor’s corpse do not fill the emptiness in his heart. What finally does is an act of mercy: Hektor’s aged father sneaks into the Greek camp on a mule-cart laden high with treasure to ransom the body. Something in the courage of this gesture–and its link to Achilles’ own aged father waiting in vain for a young soldier to come home from the perils of war–causes Achilles’ failed attempts at godlike behavior to crack. And Achilles finally does the sensible thing: he performs an act of kindness to his enemy and lets the body go. The book ends with Hektor’s funeral pyre. The prophecies are being fulfilled one by one. Next to go is that Achilles will die. After that, Troy itself will die. But all of that lays outside the scope of the book.
My listeners listened with rapt attention as I told them a version of this story and I was reminded of something Aristotle said: that plot is so important to the success of a poem that a plain reading of the plot should elicit the same type of emotion as a full performance of a tragic drama. And here it was. Here I was sitting with Indian people in a room far from where these stories were first told and farther still from the classrooms where I first read of them, and we were joyfully sharing the sorrows of Achilles who, if a version of him lived at all, is at least 3000 years dead as of this writing.
Aristotle wasn’t wrong: a great plot lasts. Yes it’s the characters we’ll remember… but the plot is what reveals the character of the character. You can’t just tell the reader about the character. You have to reveal the character through the development of the plot. That much has not changed since Gilgamesh, let alone since Achilles.
I am not great with plot. It’s been a struggle to overcome this difficulty in my own writing. But I have found that, as long as I have my characters DO things, there does end up being a plot by the end of the story. I would love to have my characters just sit and think things; talk matters over; discuss their competing philosophies. And maybe if I did that I’d end up with a book as compelling as Plato’s Symposium or Herbert’s God Emperor of Dune or any of a number of other successful books in that style. But I maintain a naive hope that I can publish something worth reading in the old style. A plot that captures the imagination; that feels true; a story whose characters feel true. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into Aristotle.
I can’t force you to read Aristotle. Nor do I want to. I can just tell you that, if you’re interested or curious, there is something there. And I wish you luck in finding it.
-Adam
To view a list of all poems that have been part of the 30 Days, 30 Poems project, click here.
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