April 2, 2024 It’s National Poetry Month, and since 2011, I have been selecting and posting poems on Facebook for each day of April. Many of you have followed my posts each year and that has been most gratifying for me.
But I admit that this year I am not as motivated to do this. My heart is heavy because of the constant march toward genocide in Gaza. I am finding little solace or hope anywhere these days, not even in poetry; in fact, I am feeling deep despair about the profound and continuing suffering of Palestinians. The first day of April came and went, with horrific news about Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on top of all the bombing and starvation and the intense human deprivations in all of Gaza. And the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and inside Israel, worsens each day. We are all so fearful and are in deep, deep mourning.
Here is a poem by the lovely poet Tala Abu Rahmeh, a poem that feels relevant to our world today. “Do you know what getting bombed by an F16 feels like?” This is her question and the title of her work. https://aaww.org/do-you-know/
April 4 My pick for today’s National Poetry Month poem is “From the River to the Sea” by Samer Abu Hawwash (translated from the Arabic by Huda Fakhreddine). Abu Hawwash’s listing of “every” aspect of life in this space feels so essential and beautiful; here are some of his words: “…every tear, every scream, every air, every hope, every supplication, every secret, every well, every prayer, every song….” https://lithub.com/from-the-river-to-the-sea-a-poem-by-samer-abu-hawwash-translated-by-huda-fakhreddine/
April 5 One of my favorite poems by Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha is “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” which is also the title of his poetry collection published by City Lights Books. Mosab’s book won the American Book Award, Palestine Book Award, and Arrowsmith Press’s 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry Prize. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155510/things-you-may-find-hidden-in-my-ear
April 6 Today’s poem is by Palestinian poet, novelist, and children’s story writer Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, “Mothers Arrange Their Aches at Night” (translated by Fady Joudah). She writes, “…mothers feel sadness for mysterious reasons, like sadness over other mothers who stand in public streets holding photos of their sons’ well-groomed faces…” https://poets.org/poem/mothers-arrange-their-aches-night
April 7 Today is the six-month mark of Israel’s war on Gaza. How does one hold all the memories of destroyed homes, a decimated homeland? How painful it must be to think of what Gaza was before the war, to remember the past and cope with the present. Talented Gaza poet Basman Derawi gives us a glimpse, juxtaposing his sweet memories with friends with the words, “If Gaza hadn’t been killed,” the line that starts each of his five stanzas.
April 8 According to the NGO Addameer—Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, as of April 2024, Israel is holding 9,400 Palestinian political prisoners. Incarceration of Palestinians (and this includes child prisoners) is a tremendous burden on Palestinian society, and issues of torture and arbitrary detention are documented widely. Today’s poem is one that is decades old, and it continues to be relevant: “End of a Talk with a Jailer,” by renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim (1939-2014; scroll down to the middle of the article to see the poem). https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/samih-al-qasim-and-language-revolution?fbclid=IwAR2aJ64HpSCzYZtcze5VxqbE691kkzXGAkLb9YJ2YnwLp-Oi1eOV98oxZMY
April 9 Taha Muhammad Ali was a Palestinian poet and short story writer who grew up in Saffuriya (in the Galilee); it was one of the 500 Palestinian villages that were depopulated and destroyed by Israeli forces during the 1948 war. Ali was self taught and devoured literature from all over the world. I love this poem by him, “Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower.” Indeed, Abd el-Hadi continues to face this monstrous injustice. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54301/abd-el-hadi-fights-a-superpower
April 10 National Poetry Month continues. This year I am tending to focus on Palestinian poets, or poems about Palestine.
April 11 Fadwa Tuqan, an important and prolific poet in Palestine during the 20th century, wrote about her deep ties to homeland and the vicissitudes of dispossession and dislocation. In this poem — “A Prayer to the New Year” — she seeks hope in new beginnings. Her words of supplication resonate for me these days: “Give us love, so we may build the collapsed universe within us anew/ and restore/ the joy of fertility to our barren world.”
April 12 The Palestinians’ attachment to the land is deep.Land is the source of life and the embodiment of heritage and patrimony. The late Palestinian poet (and teacher, journalist, political activist, and translator) Rashid Hussein celebrates these sentiments in “With the Land.” He writes: “Even when I sleep the land comes near me in my dream. I smuggle its wild thyme between exiles I sing its stones…”
April 14 Today’s poem is another one from the viewpoint of a Palestinian prisoner. It was penned by Palestine’s national poet Mahmoud Darwish, who inspires us to think of poetry as a place of imagination, steadfastness, resistance, and hope. In fact, Darwish once said that “every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.”
April 15 The world often forgets that Israel has attacked and bombed Gaza many times in the past, including in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, and at present (2023-24). Tens of thousands have been killed, injured, and maimed for life. These three short poems by Nathalie Handal were written in 2014, but continue to ring true. They pack so much heartache in very few words.
April 16 Here is another poem that is relevant today, although it was written after the 2014 war on Gaza. This one has stayed with me all these years. It’s a plea and a lament.
April 17 In one of my poems, Idescribe the olive tree as “an ancestor, a food source, a healer.” It’s hard to overstate the importance of the olive tree in Palestinian history and culture. Poet Jessica Bagwell writes: “This tree has been known. This tree knows more of the wind, and the water and the history than you.”
In one of their infographics, the organization Visualizing Palestine says that since 1967, the Israeli authorities have uprooted over 800,000 olive trees in Palestine (and this statistic is from 2013, so the number is even more staggering now).
April 18 Here is a beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, written as a reflection by a contemplative moon looking at the Earth, with sadness about Gaza. The moon says: “I who have been staring down so long see no reason for the sorrows humans make.”
April 20 The Palestinian poet from Gaza, Khaled Abdallah, paints a picture in this poem titled “Seeds in Flight.” It’s about an ancient woman who “wanders the earth gathering chamomile.” The ending is lovely and affirming (on many levels). Khaled Abdallah, “Seeds in Flight” https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/seeds-in-flight
April 21 A small explanation for today’s poem, for non-Arabic speakers: In talking to one’s parents in Arabic, ya + mama (o + mama) is elided into yamma, and ya + baba (o + baba) becomes yaba. And often, parents respond using the same words back to their children, like if I asked my mother’s opinion on something, she might say to me, “yamma, I don’t think so.” I think most people know that habibi (habibti for feminine) means “my loved one, my dear.”
I usually choose short poems for my National Poetry Month postings on FB, but this was exceptional and I made an exception. Fady Joudah is a very important poet and voice in our time. Art is by the lovely Malak Mattar.
April 22 Today’s poem is by the Palestinian poet from Jerusalem, Najwan Darwish, titled “We Never Stop.” He writes, “The people had a single country,/ but mine multiplied in loss,/ renewed itself in absence.” http://www.najwandarwish.com/
April 23 I’ve posted this poem during another year, and want to post it again. "Journey" is a beautiful rumination on the life path we take and the process of aging. As Palestinian poet Lisa Suhair Majaj writes, no matter how we age outwardly, "at the core, the wood still lives."
April 27 "Kindness," by Naomi Shihab Nye, is one of those touchstone poems that I always go back to. I'm sure I've posted this poem here over the years, and that many of you have read it. It was written in 1995 and is now almost 30 years old! This poem’s wisdom endures. We need so much more kindness in our world.
April 28 Today’s poem is “Migrant Earth” by Deema Shihabi, a beautiful, lyrical poem that talks about loss and homeland. Deema Shihabi, “Migrant Earth” https://poets.org/poem/migrant-earth
April 29 Heba Al-Agha is a Palestinian writer from Gaza. Her powerful poem, “When the War Parts,” was translated by Julia Choucair Vizoso and published today in Arab Lit Quarterly. Here is an excerpt:
No history book said how to prepare for the long war no class taught to pitch a tent on the side of the road no math teacher said that the corner fits ten people no religion class revealed: children also die also rise as a butterfly, a bird, a star. https://arablit.org/2024/04/29/when-the-war-parts-a-poem-from-gaza-by-heba-al-agha/
April 30 ّI will end National Poetry Month with a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s national poet. Maybe he wrote “Your Night Is of Lilac” with his lover in mind, or maybe he wrote it to the land…. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52547/your-night-is-of-lilac
2023 Daily Poem Selections
April 1, 2023 Since 2011, I have been posting a poem on Facebook each day of National Poetry Month. Each year I look forward to sharing poems that make me think and rethink, wonder, be sad or happy, or fill me with awe. This year I decided to add them to my website so more people can find and read them.
For our inaugural poem this month, here is “Bride” by Maggie Smith. She begins, “How long have I been wed/ to myself?” This is a lovely poem about self love. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/27/bride
April 2, 2023 For the second day of National Poetry Month, here is a beautiful affirmation of deep living, of our belonging to nature and to generations of humanity. The poet, adrienne maree brown, starts with the words, “even now/ we could be happy” and halfway through, “even now/ we can be present.…” The last stanza takes my breath away. Here is “spell for reclaiming the moment” by adrienne maree brown. https://www.splitthisrock.org/poetry-database/poem/spell-for-reclaiming-the-moment
April 3, 2023 What was life like in the internment camps set up for the Japanese in the United States from 1942 to 1946? The poem, “Barracks Home” by Toyo Suyemoto, paints the picture most skillfully and poignantly. Be sure to watch the one-minute, ten-second illustrated film of the poem. The poet asks toward the end, “What peace can such a place as this impart?” https://www.mellon.org/twenty-ten-25/barracks-home/=
April 4, 2023 Today in Alexandria, VA, we are welcoming The Golden Rule, the anti-nuke ship that travels around the world to raise awareness about the dangers of nuclear arms, as it docks at the marina on the Potomac River here. I will be reading a couple of poems at the event.
April 5, 2023 This poem, “The Joins” by Chana Bloch, captures so beautifully the small and large ruptures in relationships, and how we craft the imperfect healing that ensues. http://www.versedaily.org/2015/thejoins.shtml
April 6, 2023 Today’s poem is “Meeting at an Airport” by Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, who has written so many gems. Two friends meet by chance at an airport, after forty years, and the poet answers the questions (“What do you hate/ and who do you love?”) the same way…read his beautiful answers! He writes that as he was about to reply,his blood was “rushing in me/ like the shadow/ cast by a cloud of starlings.” Friendship remains while everything around us changes; and sometimes this makes us weep. I love this poem. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54303/meeting-at-an-airport
April 7, 2023 I often walk in the evening, right before the sun goes down. “The Light Continues” by Linda Gregg makes me rethink this daily transformation from day to night, with “the changing of the guard,” as Gregg writes, of the sun and moon. To her each time, this is a kind of personal rebirth. https://similarworlds.com/poetry/4202296-The-Light-continues-A-poem-by-Linda-Gregg
April 8, 2023 Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, a Palestinian poet, novelist, and children’s book writer, lives under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. This poem, “Mothers Arrange Their Aches at Night,” talks of the ordinary and extraordinary roles that mothers take on, like holding photos of their martyred sons to be captured by cameras. They also “hold up the house beams” and so much more. The last line feels like the poem’s capstone. https://poets.org/poem/mothers-arrange-their-aches-night
April 9, 2023 If you’re not familiar with this poem by Danusha Laméris, “Bonfire Opera,” you’re in for a fabulous treat. “In those days,” it starts, and recounts a wondrous tale, lush in sensory detail. The ending is a surprise, a profound understanding that becomes clear, both anguished and stunning. http://www.danushalameris.com/poems.html
April 10, 2023 “Love Comes Quietly” by Robert Creeley is a short, seemingly simple poem that packs a (tender) punch in the second stanza. https://poets.org/poem/love-comes-quietly
April 11, 2023 My dear friend, poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller, brought this poem to my attention. I know that he and I, and so many people I know, think deeply about what it means to be aging, how to grow into our later years with more lightness of being as we shed material things and widen our perspectives. Here is “I Dare You” by Dorianne Laux. https://poets.org/poem/i-dare-you
April 12, 2023 Poet James Crews always homes in on the crux of the matter, and always with tender perception. He models the idea of kindness to oneselfin many of his poems. The words that begin this one, repeated twice, like affirmations, are “Let me…” — let me endure, let me trust, let me thrive We sometimes need to experience a fire in our lives in order to get through it, and then grow. This poem is about strength and resilience, both in nature and in human character. Here is “Let Me Thrive” by James Crews. https://singingbowl.org/author/jamescrews/page/8/
April 13, 2023 The poem by the late celebrated Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” became famous soon after 9/11. Its lines speak of compassion and optimism, with many references to nature along with aspects of the scarred, human-made world. Although the unsettling words “mutilated world” appear four times, there is also something comforting about this poem, especially the ending. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57095/try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world-56d23a3f28187
April 15, 2023 This gorgeous poem by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha recalls and vivifies the making of zaatar pies. It offers a “recipe” that is an invocation ofgenerational memory and the hillsides where zaatar is lovingly foraged and brought home. Here is one lovely stanza: “And in the kneading/ hinge forward, let the weight/ of what you carry on your shoulders,/ the luster of your language, shade/ of your story press into the dough.” And later, "Some grandmothers sing as they bake,/ others speak prayers.” You will find many beautiful, inimitable lines in this poem, “Eating the Earth.” https://www.sukoonmag.com/responsive/poems-lena-khalaf-tuffaha/
April 16, 2023 Karenne Wood was a member of the Monacan Indian Nation and lived in Northern Virginia until she died in 2019. She wrote poems about Virginia Indians and their history, identity, and culture. In “My Standard Response,” we can really feel her frustration about the stereotypes she encounters of indigenous peoples.At one point later in the poem, she even writes “I’m sick of explaining myself.” Here is “My Standard Response” by Karenne Wood. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147117/my-standard-response
April 17, 2023 Allow me to offer one of my own poems today. I am grateful to Steven Ratiner, Poet Laureate of Arlington, Massachusetts, for publishing “Prayer for Syria” in his latest newsletter, “The Red Letters.” The poem responds to the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey and the amazing, and heartbreaking, story of the infant found alive under the rubble in the town of Jindayris. You can read the poem and the essay Steven wrote on this blogspot (scroll down a bit to “The Red Letters” and then to “Red Letter Poem #156): http://dougholder.blogspot.com/
April 18, 2023 Lucille Clifton is one of the great poets of our time. Her poems always reach deeply and make me think. I love this short one, “homage to my hips”; it does all of that and also makes me smile at the end. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49487/homage-to-my-hips]
April 20, 2023 I have been thinking a lot recently about the role of poetry in spurring people to action. Diane di Prima is a poet who comes to mind, one “who frankly wrote about sexuality, feminism, class, and various aspects of the counterculture, [and] was regularly targeted by the authorities for her radical content…” (quote from the Academy of American Poets). She was a contemporary of the Beat movement poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Read her poem, “Revolutionary Letter #2,” and note in the second stanza how she describes a tribe, “an organism, one flesh, breathing joy….” (there is much more!). https://poets.org/poem/revolutionary-letter-2
April 21, 2023 The horrific Charleston, SC, church massacre occurred during the tenure of US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, in June 2015. He wrote these moving words in memory of the nine victims. The beginning is “poem by poem/ we can end the violence,” with a plea at the end, “…stop them/ from falling.” Sadly, we continue to relive similar horrible shootings too often in the United States. Here is “Poem by Poem” by Juan Felipe Herrera. https://poets.org/poem/poem-poem
April 22, 2023 Although Muriel Rukeyser is more known for poetry addressing injustice, human rights, and anti-war sentiments, this poem, “Water Night,” is also a lovely, lyrical piece. Is it describing (beautifully) the act of falling asleep? I’m curious how others read it. Here is “Water Night” by Muriel Rukeyser. http://murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org/2018/12/07/water-night/
April 23, 2023 Here are “Three Poems from Palestine” by Najwan Darwish because I couldn’t decide which one to point to on this page. They are all so meaningful and moving. I hope you will read all three. This poet’s voice captures so much of the Palestinian people’s angst, sorrow, abandonment, and loss. But he does so with dignity and situates the experience in a long history. And despite it all, in the first poem he affirms, “No matter. I still want to write it —/ the land.” These translations are by the brilliant Kareem James Abu-Zeid. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2021/summer/three-poems-palestine-najwan-darwish
April 24, 2023 Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Here is collection of poems by Armenian poet Peter Balakian. They are all so moving, and I’d like to draw your attention to “Parable for Vanished Countries” and “After the Survivors Are Gone.” https://pen.org/june-tree/
April 25, 2023 Hanif Abdurraqib’s creative way with metaphor and word is so compelling to me. In this poem, he writes of the brief life of the peony, “a flower with a short season. born dying,” as he describes a relationship that is ending. The title of the poem, “How Can Black People Talk about Flowers at a Time Like This,” is a question he heard someone whisper at a poetry reading, after which he wrote a series of poems with the same title. This poet is so imaginative in the way he gets to the nub of things. https://poems.com/poem/how-can-black-people-write-about-flowers-at-a-time/
April 27, 2023 This poem is for optimists and early rising birds that wake up chirping that “life is so fine.” Here is the charming poem, “For the Bird Singing before Dawn,” by Kim Stafford https://poets.org/poem/bird-singing-dawn
April 28, 2023 Langston Hughes wrote the powerful poem “Democracy” in 1949, when segregation and racism against African Americans were institutionalized in US society. “I have as much right/ As the other fellow has/ To stand/ On my two feet/ And own the land,” he affirms. The website also has a lovely animation (49 seconds) to accompany the reading of this poem (scroll down a bit on the page). https://www.mellon.org/article/video-democracy
April 29, 2023 There are poems you go back to because they’re beautiful and make you feel a certain way. “Antidotes to Fear of Death” by Rebecca Elson is one of them. She was a Canadian astronomer and poet who died young of cancer. Her first lines: "Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars." There is a sensitive commentary on the poem in the article that follows, which describes the poem as “an intense engagement with mortality.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/23/poem-of-the-week-antidotes-to-fear-of-death-by-rebecca-elson
April 30, 2023 Well, friends, it’s the last day of National Poetry Month. Thanks to the many folks who read and commented on, or just engaged on your own with, the poems I have posted. I’ve enjoyed choosing the poems to post, and especially, reading a bunch of poems before deciding which ones to feature. If any of you would like the full month’s postings, send me a direct message with your email address and I will email the document to you.
We will go out with a bang! Check out this amazing poem, “You Are Who I Love,” by Aracelis Girmay. I know it’s long, but it’s so worth reading. The poet Hanif Abdurraqib says that whenever he is asked to share a poem at a demonstration, this is the one he reads. https://poets.org/poem/you-are-who-i-love