National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month!  The 2009 Poetry Month poster is designed by Paul Sahre and  features the lines “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” from T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Inspired by this poster, The Academy of American Poety at Poetry.Org has started the Free Verse Project, in their words:

Capture and share your own ephemeral bits of verse. Write lines from a favorite poem on a sandy beach, assemble twigs on a hillside, or chalk the sidewalk. Take a photo before it disappears and post it in the Free Verse group page on Flickr, or on the Academy’s Fan Page on Facebook, or email your photo to freeverse@poets.org. Include the source of your lines in the photo caption.

There are prizes!! All photos posted by April 15 will be automatically entered in a contest to win the new Poem in Your Pocket anthology and a commemorative piece of jewelry by San Francisco designer Jeanine Payer, who specializes in hand-engraving lines of poetry on earrings, necklaces, and other items. Selected entries will be featured on Poets.org.

Day 15

of Dependent Co-Arising:

the secret society of people who are up before dawn

Personal Symbol, My Manifesto

FuFu d. 12 May 2007

Personal Symbol

Do you have a personal symbol recurrent in your poetry?
Like Anne Sexton’s Rat’s Star?

Rat’s Star
and I’m off
the unfairness of the lack
of a hamster constellation
in the Milky Way Galaxy
on to Fu Fu the Galaxy’s First
Blogging Hamster
how after his death
the fortune on my bottle of FuFu Berry Jones Soda
read: YOU ARE HEADED FOR A LAND OF SUNSHINE
And I knew it was meant
for Fu Fu
I mean surely
there is space between Dorado the goldfish
and Lepus the hare
for Fu Fu the hamster’s stars
and if I had a personal symbol
it’d be something simple
at times overlooked
that people would smile
and shake their heads
in unexpected recognition
so let’s poke holes
in the night curtain
let sun shine through in the shape of Fu Fu