by Clelia Sweeney

You might remember this rhyme from childhood:

“Keep a poem in your pocket, and a picture in your head, and you’ll never feel lonely at night when you’re in bed.”

The catchy stanza comes from Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, a 1900s children’s book author. I remember hearing it in elementary school, when we were given printed poems to keep in our actual pockets throughout April. If you memorized and recited your poem to a librarian, you got a prize. I remember sing-songing my way through “The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven” by Jack Prelutsky over and over, but could never master the whole thing.

Tomorrow marks the end of this year’s National Poetry Month. It strikes me as something that we (maybe) have an awareness of as children that doesn’t really cross over into adult life. I can’t think of the last time there was a blockbuster poetry book, maybe Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur in 2014. There’s not much call to engage with poetry as an adult, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

We’ve been inviting adults to get hands-on with poetry this month with a wall of word magnets next to our book display on the second floor. It has produced some great nuggets like: “if bloom first wither,” “description over nothing,” and “I can do this.” Maybe in homage to the solar eclipse this month, someone else wrote, “sun travel above that moon.” If your head is still in the stars from that day, check out Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith or Tethered to Stars by Fady Joudah.

This month in our 12 to Try reading challenge, the prompt is to read a book of poetry or novel in verse by a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color) author. (You can read a book in this category at any time; April is just the time we’re featuring recommendations for this category.) The challenge ends on August 31^st, so you have a whole summer’s worth of reading time ahead of you!

Some titles I would suggest for this category are: If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar, Soft Science by Franny Choi, Rangikura by Tayi Tibble, and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night by Morgan Parker. Check out that last one if you’ve ever wanted to read poems about reality television; it does not disappoint.