Yellow is the color of the moment. The daffodils with their little heads and pretty ruffled collars and the tiny-petaled forsythia bushes that are bursting open everywhere. And then everything will be pink.
This last week of March was cold. On Sunday my husband and I drove north to Essex, Connecticut, to meet up half way with our older son and his young family. We planned to walk the sinfully pretty colonial streets and to meander alongside the Connecticut River but quickly retreated to “Old Gris” the 200-year-old Griswold Inn for our celebratory* lunch. We sat at a wood table in a tiny wood paneled room with an ancient fireplace. My son twitched his nose in appreciation. “Do you smell it, mom?” –smoke etched into the wood hundreds of years old, like the complexities of an aged wine.
And in this setting my son asked me about the end lines in one of my poems. Do fish have hearts / and circulation? / Why don’t I know it? He read into these lines more than one meaning. “What meaning did you intend, mom?” And so we spent a little time talking poetry.
I said to him, the poet doesn’t always know or need to know all the meanings that are possible. Almost always the poet is creating an experience—no crisp guidelines—the tactile, the music, reaching us in an indefinable way.
And I thought about it the next morning. My son had understood under his skin what I’d felt at the lake when my granddaughter’s mounting anxiety for the trapped fish had skyrocketed. I’d felt helpless to fix my granddaughter, to fix the fish. “Call dad!”
“Why don’t I know it?”
April is poetry month, established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets—meant to remind us that poets are essential members of our society, in times of grief, in moments of beauty. Both.
Celebrating Poetry
Elaine Sexton, Poet
I’d like to invite you to what I expect will be a tender and beautiful event. A poetry reading and conversation at the Scarsdale Library with Guest Poet Elaine Sexton reading from her fourth collection of poetry, Drive, just published by Grid Books. It’s taking place on Monday, April 25, at 7 p.m. in the Scott Room of the just renovated library. In addition to being a deeply affecting poet, Elaine Sexton is a beloved and generous mentor to many poets.
If you live anywhere near Westchester I hope you will consider joining us. You can register here.
Public Libraries are the secret weapon of democracies. The Scarsdale Library has been especially supportive of writers and artists. Several of us writing poetry organized a poets’ community and critique group that meets regularly, and we are hosting this event. Also reading at this event: poets Harriet Shenkman, Mary Brady, Mark Levine, Nahal Motamed, (and me). Come to listen and talk poetry. There will be light refreshments. At the end of readings and following a Q&A, Elaine will sign and have copies of the beautiful Drive for sale.
“Buenos días/Buenas noches”
During the worst of Covid I was lucky to meet—across the planet—with two poet friends, Carmen Bardequez-Brown, Puertoriqueña and Nuyorican, in Thailand, and Julio César Paz, Cubano, in Vietnam. We met every few weeks in time zones 12 hours apart to talk about life and about poetry (compliments of Zoom). We decided to put together a small collection of our poems to commemorate our friendship during this difficult time. Three Poets/Tres Poetas is the result. It offers up three different voices for a total of 14 poems. It’s a small gem, I think. I admire Carmen’s power and JC’s delicacy and imagination. The chapbook is available on Amazon and other places where books are sold.
The rabbits came out to frolic. Here’s a look two years’ back to April 2020 “Moments of Grace.”
What is the color of April for you? Why?
Spanish Words of the Day
ABRIL April
EL HUMO smoke
LA POESÍA poetry
EL POEMA the poem
EL POETA the poet (m.)
LA POETA the poet (f.)
LA RIMA rhyme
LAS BIBLIOTECAS libraries
*the celebration was my birthday