It’s National Poetry Month.

I like to personally celebrate this month by making an effort to read some poetry. Years ago that effort was appeased with a complete volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.  And in 2012, as you know if you read my blog, Emily inspired me to write a book: Dickinstein.

As I was writing the book, I reread Emily’s poems and found quite a bit of inspiration there.  I even used her poems as introductions to each chapter.

Here is one of my favorites:

It’s easy to interpret the poem as Emily wanting to help bring a dead robin back to life, isn’t it?  And it’s those more obvious themes of immortality that are everywhere in her poetry which really helped build a strong plot in my book for me.

Throughout the month in celebration, I’ll be posting more poems that I like, along with a few of my own. Do you like poetry?  If so, what poems inspire you? What are you doing to celebrate National Poetry Month?