National Poetry Month Almost At An End

nearly missed it did you?

yesterday i accepted an invitation to read two poems at a sparkling new branch of the Durham Public Library System -- this one way out in Far East Durham -- as part of their celebration of National Poetry Month and their "Poetry For Everyone" series.

some people read their own poems, like Bill Baker, an African American WWII vet who read a humorous epic poem about his ship breaking down in the North Atlantic on its return from Europe at the end of the war...he brought the house down.

personally i think that one gets more out of reading poetry than hearing it read, because so much is about the structure and the line breaks and things that get lost in the reading aloud of a poem...much in the way that conversely song lyrics are better heard sung than read on a page...but i guess it's just a different experience.

i chose a poem by Charles Simic called "The Forest Walk" and also a poem by e.e. cummings with no title but it's about Spring so it seemed appropriate:

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.