A Month of Verse to Call our Own—National Poetry Month 2018

It’s National Poetry Month Again!  If you have been visiting here for a while, you know what that means—it’s our eighty annual round-up of daily doses of verse!  If you are new, here’s the scoop.  Every day all month I will feature poets and their poems.  I aim to be as broad and inclusive as possible to style, subject, period, gender, race, and neglected voices.  I don’t want just a parade of the usual dead white men, but a lot of them did write some damn fine poetry, so they have their place here too.  As always, selections follow my own tastes and whims.  Yours may be different.  But I am open to—eager for—suggestions, especially for contemporary writers.  I do not subscribe to dozens of little magazines or prowl the internet for poetry posts.  I often only stumble on new and unknown poets and I am sure I miss some great stuff.  Please feel free to turn me on to some—or be bold and submit your own.  I don’t and can’t promise to use everything.

This year Easter delayed this introductory post, but I did get it started with a short poem of my own.  But now on to better stuff!

Although I try not to be one note, current events often influence choices, particularly from contemporary poets and those often excluded or neglected.  Two years ago we featured poems by and about refugees, and it included some dazzling stuff.  Last year we highlighted Poems of Resistance.  This year we will hear voices of our young people and their inspiring movement to save their own lives by challenging America’s gun culture.  And we will listen to women who have barred their souls with #MeToo and shaken ugly patriarchy as well at the continuing declaration the #BlackLivesMatter.

Let’s begin with a poem that circulated on Facebook in early March just days after the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  Katie Houde is a student at Rockland High School in Massachusetts.

Today's poet Katie Houde, a student at Rockland High School in Massechusetswith an accademic award.

Bulletproof Teen

Run, if you can

Hide, if you can’t

If neither, fight

The fighting won’t save you

It’s to save the next class, the next hall

It’s to give them a couple of more seconds

To get there, to stop it

I am a child, a teenager

But, I am also a bulletproof vest

A diversion

Alighting chance for the others

Home in the form of a distraction

I am blood and flesh

But I need to be Kevlar and fabric

Minimal casualties

Minimal children dead

Minimal little girls and boys

Minimal college applicants

Minimal honors students

And minimal teachers and coaches

But not none.

The Constitution doesn’t allow for none.

That document is living

But will I be?

—Katie Houde