BEDA and Poetry Month...

A few of my friends are attempting to Blog Every Day in April, something that the YA author Maureen Johnson is spearheading. I know I won't make every day (I already skipped yesterday!) but I'm going to take it as an attempt to get some of my posts-in-progress actually, well, posted.

Also, April is National Poetry Month! And I am of the opinion that if you think you don't like poetry, well, you haven't read the right poem yet. There's something for everybody in the world of poetry, my friends. I don't like a lot of poetry, but then there's the stuff that just does it for me. So, I'll be sharing some poems this month, and some links to places where you can find your own cool poems.

Isn't this year's Poetry Month poster great? The line is from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Not really my style of poetry, but a very nice poem.

I have one and plan on framing it to hang somewhere in the house.

O.k., today's poem is brought to you by the American Life in Poetry project. This is a project of the poet Ted Kooser who was the US Poet Laureate from 2004 - 2006. ALP provides a poem every week with a little column written by Ted that can be reprinted in a newspaper, magazine, blog, etc. as long as you register on their site. Registering also gets the poem emailed to you each week. He has been picking some interesting poems, I have a handful saved from the last year. This is one of those - a very simple but haunting poem by William Kloefkorn that puts me in mind of William Carlos Williams with its simplicity.

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American Life in Poetry: Column 147

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Our earliest recollections are often imprinted in our memories because they were associated with some kind of stress. Here, in an untitled poem, the Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn, brings back a difficult moment from many years before, and makes a late confession:


I stand alone at the foot
Of my father's grave,
Trembling to tell:
The door to the granary is open,
Sir,
And someone lost the bucket
To the well.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2004 by William Kloefkorn, whose most recent book of poetry is "Still Life Moving", WSC Press, 2007, illustrated with pastel paintings by Carlos Frey. Reprinted from "Alvin Turner As Farmer," Logan House, 2004, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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