4-05-2025 1:35am

The Boyertown Area Expression Invites Submissions to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Lesley Misko Editor

by Jane Stahl

National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. For the rest of April, each day we will publish a poem: your favorite poem--one of your own or one by a published author.

Send your poem to janeEstahl@comcast.net with a sentence or two about yourself as the author or why the poem is among your favorites. And stay tuned for announcements of local poetry readings in the area that you may wish to attend to celebrate the integral role poets play in our culture.

One of my favorites is by e e cummings. FAIR WARNING: English teacher talk to follow!

i thank you God for most this amazing

day:: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth

how should any caring touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened.)

FAIR WARNING: I love this sonnet for its “sprung rhythm” that jolts the reader awake at the word “most.” And, of course I love the imagery of “leaping greenly spirits of trees” that, in saying the words, a smile naturally forms. (Try it.) And note the "ooo" sound we often make when in awe, expressed in “true blue” followed by a smile again at “dream.” The symphony of sound is just delightful! Enjoy!