Happy National Poetry Month!
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” – first Black U.S. Poet Laureate, Rita Dove
Take note 📝
April is a four-Saturday month so there’ll be a bit less reading time these months. I will be sending out book club discussion questions on the 19th to be completed by the 23rd. Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated in last month’s discussion!
April’s book club pick 📕
I’m thrilled to be going back to Europe this month for the first time in 16 years and exploring a region that is new to me! I cannot wait to read our April book club pick Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck while sitting in Café Sperl in Vienna, quietly observing passersby because this is a solo trip, and I’ll have no one with whom to have a fake phone conversation (nod to fellow Before Sunrise fans).
A poem for spring 🌸🌝
In honor of National Poetry Month in the US, my host country Japan, and an end to winter (both literally and the figurative winter of my life), I have written a little haiku:
Winter sighs, then fades
Blossoms bloom on once bare trees
Springtime hope returns
In the last month since starting this Substack, I have felt a slow returning to myself. I have been in a period of wintering the last few years, and I feel like I am finally coming out of hibernation. Spring is a time of rebirth; new life is being breathed into both landscapes and projects. Baby animals, as well as ideas, are being birthed. At the risk of sounding cliché, this caterpillar is long overdue to break free from her chrysalis and spread her wings again.
She followed the moon back to herself 🌝
I recently read Amanda Lovelace’s newest poetry collection She Followed the Moon Back to Herself, and so many of her poems deeply resonated with me. In her titular poem, she writes that somewhere along the way to finding herself, she dropped her compass. But when she looked to the moon (which I take to symbolize feminine energy and intuition) for guidance, the moon responds:
“don’t worry, just follow me.
try to keep in mind that
she may not be the same
as you left her, but she’ll be
exactly who you need.”
Here are a few of her other poems that really spoke to me and my own lived experience:
I admit I am biased, as I would read this woman’s shopping list. But I do highly recommend this poetry collection, especially if you are going through or have ever gone through, a transformation or transition in your own life.
Get your copy at Bookshop.org or on Amazon.
More poetic inspo ☕
As an angst-ridden tween, I turned to poetry as an outlet for all the confusing, hormone-driven thoughts and emotions I had difficulty articulating. Since those days, I haven’t really used poetry as a form of self-expression. But I saw an online trend, inspired by Jennae Cecilia’s poem from her book Deep in My Feels, where she meets her younger self for coffee. I loved reading different people’s individual takes on this poem so much that I decided to try it myself. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can do so here.
Call to action 📣
Write a poem using the prompt I met my younger self for coffee, or try your hand at a haiku. Share here if you feel comfortable! I would love to read them 😊
*P.S. A few readers mentioned they wanted to leave a comment but weren’t sure how—so here’s a quick tip! If you are reading this newsletter in your e-mail and not on the app, scroll all the way to the bottom of the email and you’ll see buttons for ‘like,’ ‘comment,’ and ‘restack.’ I look forward to hearing from you!
Happy Reading!
Morgan