National Poetry Month Begins TODAY!

April is National Poetry Month--an exciting month especially at Poets.org. Here one can sign up for a Poem-a-Day to be slipped into your e-mail inbox each day (today's selection by Philip Levine was wonderful!) and participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 29) and NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) at the soon-to-be-defunct ReadWritePoem site--a challenge that I will definitely be attempting to meet here on this blog.

So, yes, in addition to reading a poem a day (and often listening to an audio file of the poet reading his/her own work), I hope to publish a poem each day here on this blog. I have a very busy month ahead of me, so some days may elicit a mere haiku, and other days a poem of more substance and breadth. Obviously they will be first drafts, but somewhere in a few of them may reside that spark of something more that rises above mere words to something more. Some of my poems may suck and some may approach being "good," but there are only three ways to improve as a writer of poems:

1. Read lots of poems--classics and contemporary.
2. Write lots of poems, especially from prompts which can stretch one's poetry writing in fresh directions
3. Revise, revise, and revise some more.

So here is my poem for today--based on our little April snow shower this morning. Snow in Southern California definitely rates as an excellent April Fool's Day prank by Mother Nature.

April Fool's Day
Only a fool would believe
in April snow,
a sloggy quilt patchworked
of white wetness,
darkened dirt peeping through
greening grass.
Warm Southern California,
usually basking in sunshine,
chortles at the joke
of snow on April first.
Slipping from white to green,
the snow
it melts,
dissolving the foolishness
of Mother Nature's prankishness.

Copyright 2010 by Susanne Barrett

Wishing you a wonderful month of poetry,