M. Suzanne Terry

This week’s recap is going to be a little different. As you know, it’s National Poetry Month, and I’ve read a lot of poems! There were a few collections that were just meh for me and one that fell so flat that I couldn’t even bear to make it through, but I finished and enjoyed most of the ones I planned on:

• Welcome to Midland by Logan Cure 
• King of Pain by Christine Neacole Kanownik
• The Time Traveler by Joyce Carol Oates
• A Self-Portrait by May Sarton 
• The Silence Now by May Sarton
• Ladies & Gentlemen by Michael Robins
• Neruda’s Garden: An Anthology of Odes by Pablo Neruda
• The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón 
• Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones 
• Balefire by Elizabeth Wilder 
• Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón
• Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light by Joy Harjo 
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz 
• Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück 
• I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer 

I have also been bookmarking poems to share with my beloved Follow the Reader friends. I only shared a few snippets that night because I’m misfiring all over the place this week, so transporting from the page to my brain to my mouth is hard. But here are five of my favorites from the month:

1. “A Song for the Status Quo” by Saeed Jones (Alive at the End of the World) – This whole collection is amazing. I also like this interview about his work. 
2. “The Noisiness of Sleep” by Ada Limón (Bright Dead Things). I love the concluding line – “I want to be the rough clothes you can’t sleep in.”
3. Elizabeth Wilder (Balefire) – “There is not much I trust so wholeheartedly as the musty-scented pages of a book.”
4. “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo (Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light). Of course, the line about coffee charmed me – “Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children.”
5. To continue the celebration of poetry (does it ever end, really?), I’m currently reading and enjoying Clint Smith’s Counting Descent. 

And finally, a little something to start your weekend off right. For your aural enjoyment, half an hour of Tom Hiddleston reading poetry. You’re welcome.

Have a good one, friends!