The 10 Best Poems to Read for National Poetry Month
According to Poetry Writers, Editors and Mentors on Substack
How Do You Choose a Favorite Poem?
It’s hard for most poets to pick just one! Ask us to pick and we might stand still for eternity trying to decide. There are so many good ones to choose from and so many that we will read, reread and teach throughout the years. But for some of us there is a special poem that hits us harder than the others, or it just hits us at the right time, or it says something no other poem has said that we, personally, need to hear. For me, I have no problem choosing a true “favorite” poem. No question for me it is Stephen Dobyns’ poem, “How to Like it,” originally published in the Courtland Review, (3rd poem down if you click the link). Aside from it being a well-crafted poem in general, it spoke to me specifically because it captures what I imagine is the somewhat strange and particular way I have of being in the world. Half of me feels like an old man looking towards the innevitability of death and the other half of me feels like a dog who just wants to sniff butts and build the tallest sandwich in the world. I’ve never before read a poem that so captures the turbulent, often contradictory feelings bouncing around my own heart and head.
I wondered if other poets had clear favorites they would share with me (and you). So I asked some of my fellow poets on Substack to pick just one poem to recommend. Not surprisingly, they all chose different poems, some of which I know, and some I’ve never heard of before. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.
Before that, a few announcements.
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Here are 10 Poems Recommended by Poets on Substack
“To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” by Kim Addonizio
Chosen by of The Creative Crossover
Poetry has always been the best company. It offers comfort during complex and difficult times. One of my favorite poems is Kim Addonizo’s “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall.” I carry the final line in my pocket, like an in-case-of-emergency $20. “Listen I love you joy is coming,” has stood the test of time, reminding me how quickly darkness and light can change places.
Song in my Heart by Diane Seuss
Chosen by of Weird Auntie Joan’s Writer’s Substack
Oh my god, how to choose my favorite poem?! I guess I will just send ONE of my recent favorites. I am obsessed with the work of Diane Seuss. Her poem "Song in my Heart" is one of my current favorites. It demonstrates the power of precision, unexpected images, humor & authentic voice.
In This World, by Kobayashi Issa
Chosen by from ReVerse.
How do we manage to persist in our daily lives while horrors unfold on the other side of the world, underwritten in many cases by our own taxes? I can’t get this famous haiku by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) out of my head:
In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.
世の中は地獄の上の花見かな
yo no naka wa jigoku no ue no hanami kana
Mary Oliver’s “Mysteries, Yes”
Chosen by
This is my favorite poem because it reminds me of the power of a poem to do exactly what its reader needs at that moment. Oliver encourages the reader to stay away from people who presume answers to mysteries that should remain so. The poem celebrates all who revel in life’s seeming contradictions as a child saying, “‘Look!’ And laughs in amazement and then bows her head.”
Manifesto of What Breaks by Saara Myrene
Chosen by Those at
A poem I want everyone to read is “Manifesto of What Breaks” by Saara Myrene Raappana. This poem is about how breaking is both fragile and strong. One of my favorite parts about this poem is that the final stanza includes a list, and as a teacher I always tell my students to return to or start with a list if they are having trouble drafting their poems. In Raappana’s list we get to imagine all different kinds of breakages. “Milk tooth, levee, fever.”
Saara Myrene Rappana was my friend, collaborator and poetry mentor. I’m heartbroken to write that she died this March, the same year her award-winning full-length collection Chamber After Chamber was published by Massachusetts University Press.
It’s an understatement to say my understanding of the poem has been irrevocably altered. The last two words “undo, undo” now feel like a prescient gesture of comfort written for those of us still alive, living without her.
Great Things Have Happened by Alden Nowlan
Chosen by , Editor of One Art and Writer of On My Mind & In Our Time
In the same vein as saying “All politics is local”, Alden Nowlan’s ‘Great Things Have Happened’ is a reminder that it’s truly the little things in life that add up to what really matters.
What Can I Tell My Bones by Theodore Rothke
Chosen by of Writer Interupted
A poem I’ve loved for years is “What Can I Tell My Bones?” by Theodore Roethke. Part of the “Meditations of an Old Woman” sequence, it speaks to the question, “Before the moon draws back/Dare I blaze like a tree?” In other words, Have I given myself permission to live as fully as I’m able to? It’s just a gorgeous poem.
Aubade by Philip Larkin
Chosen by of Writing a Better World
Ros Barber has written an in-depth essay on accidentally memorising Philip Larkin's 'Aubade'. The essay explores the inspirational brilliance of Larkin's invisible rhyming, and the life-saving qualities of his death-dreading masterpiece. You can read it here. “Larkin and Finding Yourself in the Rubble.”
“State Bird” by Ada Limón
Chosen by Jen + Team at SWWIM Every Day
The speaker in Ada Limón’s “State Bird” is living, unenthusiastically, amidst the bluegrass and bourbon, hay bales and horses of Louisville, Kentucky. In a scant fourteen lines, Limón describes the lackluster charms of the home she never wanted, and then astonishes her reader at the turn with a fresh and resonant tribute to her love (the reason she’s living in the heartland). “State Bird” is masterful yet relatable, brilliantly crafted and emotionally compelling—and it also is exactly the kind of poem we love to feature here at SWWIM Every Day.
What the Living Do by Marie Howe and February by James Schuyler
Chosen by Joanna Penn Cooper of Muse with JPC
I can’t say that I have one favorite poem— or book, either, really. My brain doesn’t seem to work that way with literature, by favorites. But two I love for the living voice of the poets; for the interaction between the inside and outside; and for their unexpected and deceptively simple turns are “What the Living Do” by Marie Howe and “February” by James Schuyler. Each poem reminded me, at different points in my life, what being a poet could mean, what a poem could be— an understated but surprisingly moving window into the beauty to be found in mundane life, the beauty of individual voice and noticing.
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