It's National Poetry Month: Who's Your Favorite Poet?

It seems appropriate that April, of all the 12 months, would be designated as , as poetry has a rejuvenating power---and, like the spring, a good poem is transformative and effortless.

However, according to the Poetry Foundation, 2012 marks the last time the art form will recognized in a month-long awareness campaign. 

Says Katherine Pryde, press secretary for the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, “We don’t need it any more. Poetry—contemporary or centuries old, page-based or orally performed, ‘experimental’ or obviously traditional– has such a presence in every part of American life, every month of the year, that there’s just no point in devoting a single month to it.”

So let's take this opportunity to sing the praises of our favorite poet(s) and poem(s). Be they contemporary, ages-old, or RAP (rhythm in poetry), share your favorite selections with fellow Patch users.

I'll go first.....Mary Oliver is one of my favorite American poets, and I recently had the pleasure of hearing her read a few of her poems at an event at Stanford University.  Here is her poem entitled, This Morning I Watched the Deer, which, as a Belmont dweller, you may appreciate:

This morning I watched the deer

with beautiful lips touching the tips

of the cranberries, setting their hooves down

in the dampness carelessly, isn't it afterall

the carpet of their house, their home, whose roof 

is the sky?

Why, then, was I suddenly miserable?

Well, this is nothing much.

This is the heaviness of the body watching the swallows

gliding just under the roof.

This is the wish that the deer would not lift their heads 

and leap away, leaving me there alone.

This is the wish to touch their faces, their brown wrists--

to sing some sparkling poem into

the folds of their ears,

then walk with them,

over the hills

and over the hills

and into the impossible trees.*

*From "Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press

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