April is National Poetry Month!

...Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. - Audre Lorde 

Happy National Poetry Month! Whether you are an avid poetry reader or do not read poetry at all, I invite you to try some of the titles listed below. Try something classic like Fifty Poems of Emily Dickinson, opens a new window or something contemporary like Ocean Vuong's, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, opens a new window. Enjoy!

An American Sunrise

Citizen

Wade in the Water

The Tradition

The Death of Sitting Bear

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce

The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One

Lessons on Expulsion

Please Excuse This Poem

Homie

Tsunami Vs. the Fukushima 50

The Octopus Museum

Human Hours

If They Come for Us

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

NEW AMERICAN BEST FRIEND

Half-light

Bloom in Reverse

When My Brother Was An Aztec

Beauty Is A Verb

Collected Poems, 1947-1997

Oculus : Poems

Virgin

Edgar Allan Poe

Love Her Wild

Classic Love Poems

S O S - Poems, 1961-2013

Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems

John Donne

Love Poems & A Good Cry