The Poetry Forum

 Lifelong poetry lover or just curious?

Focusing on published works, the Poetry Forum is a chance for anyone and everyone to read, discuss, explore or just listen to poetry in a relaxing setting. No level of expertise is required, only an interest in and a desire to share and enjoy new and favorite poems and poets with others.

At each meeting, members of the group have the chance to offer their favorites or share “found” pieces, followed by a discussion of a featured poet. The only real rule is to have fun.

Hosted by Ani Apelian, the Poetry Forum meets the third Monday of every month in the Winters Room, in the main library building, to read and discuss published poets.

No registration is required. Those wishing to attend need only to show up at 6pm to join in the discussions. For further information contact Shawn Newcomer at 326-0536 or by email.

Monday, September 20, 6pm

Margaret Atwood, prolific writer of both novels and poetry will be the center of our attention on September 20 in the Winters room... The Door, her 2007 volume includes a CD with Atwood reading her own work...it's always rewarding
to hear poetry from the "horse's mouth" ...!


Information about:

Margaret Atwood  | Poetry Foundation | Wikipedia Article | Contemporary Writers

Browse the latest issue of POETRY magazine at the library's newsstand

Poem of the Month for September:

The Oven Bird
By Robert Frost

There is a singer eveyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past,
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.



Previous Poem of the Month:



Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
by Gary Snyder

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.




July Poem of the Month

Witness
by
Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.


June Poem of the Month

June Light

By Richard Wilbur

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me outside the window. You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire
As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face
As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,
Which promise always wine, by mottled fire
More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift—Oh when I saw it fall
Into my hands, through all that naïve light,
It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight
As must have been the first great gift of all.




May Poem of the Month

Maternal Grandfather
by Ko Un

Ch’oi Hong-kwan, our maternal grandfather,
was so tall his high hat would reach the eaves,
scraping the sparrows’ nests under the roof.
He was always laughing.
If our grandmother offered a beggar a bite to eat,
he was always the first to be glad.
If our grandmother ever spoke sharply to him,
he’d laugh, paying no attention to what she said.
Once, when I was small, he told me:
‘Look, if you sweep the yard well
the yard will laugh.
If the yard laughs,
the fence will laugh.
Even the morning-glories
blossoming on the fence will laugh.’




April Poem of the Month

Come, Aristotle

By Maxine Kumin

On April 4, moving the pea fence
to another row, we unearth forty
perfect parsnips that have spent
the coldest winter since the seventies
condemned like leeches, Aristotle says,
to suck up whatever sustenance
may flow to them wherever they are stuck.
Overlooked. Our good luck.

Aromatic poppets, pried
from the black gold of old soil,
dingier than cauliflower or pearls,
we eat them braised with a little brown sugar.
Pure, Aristotle. Come, philosopher.
Come to the table. Sit by my side.

From the book Still to Mow.
2007



March Poem of the Month

If each day falls
inside each night,
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.

By Pablo Neruda
From THE SEA AND THE BELLS p.95
Translated 1988
by William O'Daly

(In Spanish)

Si cada día cae
dentro de cada noche
hay un pozo
donde la claridad está encerrada.

Hay que sentarse a la orilla
del pozo de la sombra
y pescar luz caída
con paciencia.


By Pablo Neruda
From THE SEA AND THE BELLS p.94

January Poem of the Month

Ewigkeit

Turn on my tongue, O Spanish verse; confirm

Once more what Spanish verse has always said

Since Seneca’s black Latin; speak your dread

Sentence that all is fodder for the worm.

Come, celebrate once more pale ash, pale dust,

The pomps of death and the triumphant crown

Of that bombastic queen who tramples down

The petty banners of our pride and lust.

Enough of that. What things have blessed my clay

Let me not cravenly deny. The one

Word of no meaning is Oblivion,

And havened in eternity, I know,

My many precious losses burn and stay:

That forge, that night, that risen moon aglow.

--Jorge Luis Borges

translated by Richard Wilbur

 


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