An April Quartet:  In Alto, Poets Face that Discordant Sound

This is how April will find us, still, in the throes of this great viral mystery. Who shall be next? Who will escape, sometimes, barely? Hold on! Persist. Where to find solace and perspective? In poetry, perhaps.

In honor of National Poetry Month, we have prepared a map of sorts. A poetic map of terrain only poets dare travel. Poets have not shied away from the most difficult moments of any day. We turn to poetry to reflect, find relief and to learn. A poem can teach us how to see our way through the most terrible of times.

The resource list An April Quartet:  In Alto, Poets Face that Discordant Sound, includes links to online poems, e-books and e-audiobooks. You can partake of James Tate’s quirky way of teasing the heck out of the idea of death in The Government Lake or travel into depths reminiscent of Dante in The M: The Mobius Strip Club of Grief by Bianca Stone.

One excellent source for reading poems online is the Poetry Foundation.  Check out Janice Gould’s prose poem Flu, 1962 which demonstrates that, even, in the midst of illness the business of being a family never takes a rest.

A poem can change your world. It can bring a new perspective and understanding.  While there is no history without suffering, E.A. Markham has written a poem titled A History Without Suffering, proving the magical properties of poetry can dispel our worst nightmares.

While we see no end in sight. While no one is left untouched in these dire times, the library is a lifeline, still. Grab hold, we hope that you can take solace when and where you can in our offerings. The intent is that these poems will offer insight into the ways that pain can forge new ways of seeing the world and our place in it. They, also, demonstrate that someone will live to tell the tale. This is the future’s promise, hard though it be, in Desiree Alvarez’s Afterword.

The rest of this quartet will be sung in lighter tones and with lilting levity, that we may feast on the food that poetry can provide and pluck its flowering poems.

~ posted by Chris