Thanks to everyone who’s been sharing their favorite poems with us. We have a lot to choose from for our giveaway. We’ll post our first winner tomorrow, so stay tuned!
In the mean time, keep the poems coming! We’re giving away three different poetry broadsides (pictured above), including one signed by Billy Collins. It’s easy to enter: just share your favorite poem (title and author, or the whole thing) in the comments below and then beginning tomorrow, we’ll select three to post to our blog. If your poem is posted, you win a prize.
So tell us – if you could only read one poem for the rest of your life, which one would it be?
BookPeople 
Nirvana (Charles Bukowski)
Becky, you’re our winner for April 27th! Send us an email at online@bookpeople.com to claim your prize.
Admonitions to a special person by Anne Sexton
“Hide and Seek” – Kay Ryan
It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.
It could be Song by Seamus Heaney, or Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood (or Variations on the Word Love, or Variations on the Word Sleep), or what she was wearing by Denver Butson, or Shelley’s Ozymandias, or (as melodramatic as it is) Robert Browning’s My Last Dutchess (I love the creepiness). And there’s always the obvious in T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, which I can’t love less even though it’s loved by everyone. Also, A Woman is Talking to Death by Judy Grahn, though I couldn’t read it every day forever because it it such a punch in the gut.
I can’t really decide, because I love them all, and my favorite changes with my mood. Maybe y’all could pick your favorite from the aforementioned?
In honor of National Poetry Month, the poem “On Children” by Kahil Gibran (1883-1931) put to song in the ‘80s by Sweet Honey in the Rock. His works lag in sales only by Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu. The song at the link below is based on this poem. The poem and the song remind me of my three incredibly and wonderful daughter and my incredible grandchildren.
Sweet Honey In The Rock – Of Children
http://www.youtube.com
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable
I’ll go with some John Ashbery:
Just Walking Around
What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.