In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

—Rabindranath Tagore was born #OnThisDay in 1861. bit.ly/44i24sZ

I practiced throwing roundhouse kicks as a boy,
feet aimed at my reflection in store windows,

at street signs, at parked cars, everything I knew
I could break. Now, my feet cannot leave

the ground, and I write love poems for the dead.

—W. Todd Kaneko bit.ly/3QmXJiq

THURSDAY join us on May 9 from 7-8 PM CT for an Open Door reading featuring Sol Cabrini with alfonzo kahlil and C. Russell Price with Andrew Sa.

Register: bit.ly/3QrjU74

You see, Wekumei,
when folks figure
you are their slave
your past belongs to them.

—Ama Ata Aidoo with our #PoemOfTheDay on African World Heritage Day. bit.ly/3UlxQAJ

Explore KARA WALKER: BACK OF HAND from the inside out.

Visit the exhibition before it closes on May 18: bit.ly/3Ub5QRI

📸: Sarah Joyce

i’m the one executing the half-bent
dip in the slow slowdrag
with the smug little smile
& the really cool shades.

—A. B. Spellman with our #PoemOfTheDay . bit.ly/4bk3pBX

My soul radially whorls out to the edges of my body, according to the same laws
by which stars shine, communicating with my body by emanation.

—Mei-mei Berssenbrugge bit.ly/4aXtCX6

What THE INVENTION OF THE DARLING posits is that the universe is a coupling, and that what existence requires is not just divinity, but a consciousness capable of pursuing it.

—Ed Simon on new poems by Li-Young Lee bit.ly/3UCfP2j

🎉🎉🎉 It's happeniiiiiing: the 2024 Poetry Out Loud National Finals! 🎉🎉🎉

Cheer on all 9 of these incredible finalists, and find our who will become our 2024 National Champion!

Livestream it all from wherever you are. #POL24 bit.ly/4bplej7

Let my memory-depleted memory

preserve all this joy:
restricted fragile materials.
Who can stop me?

—Catherine Barnett in the May 2024 issue of POETRY.
bit.ly/3w7rahJ

Our 2024 PoetryOutLoud National Finalists are backstage getting ready for tonight's competition!

Tune in at 7 p.m. ET on arts.gov/Poetry-Out-Loud as one of these students recites their way to the National Champion title & $20,000 grand prize 🎉

Lovely to see a dear friend's poem on Poetry Foundation's page as the poem of the day! poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine…

Join us on May 9 from 7-8 PM CT for an Open Door reading featuring Sol Cabrini with alfonzo kahlil and C. Russell Price with Andrew Sa.

Register: bit.ly/3QrjU74

Your hands wrapped around my fugitive breath even through those dreams. The sight of a baby in the metro who looked like she could be ours (and my relief she was not).

—Karthika Naïr with our #PoemOfTheDay . bit.ly/4djLNI3

Congratulations to the nine PoetryOutLoud national finalists!
Learn how you can watch them compete tonight at 7:00 PM ET. arts.gov/initiatives/po…
#POL2024

This week on #HarrietBooks , Janani Ambikapathy reviews A SONG OF FLOWERS: NI XOCHITL, NI KUIKATL by Mardonio Carballo, translated by Adam W. Coon and published by JBE Books (Jean Boîte Éditions).

Read the review: bit.ly/3y6wVMW

Nothing waters the bole,
the stone wastes nothing.
Speech could not cobble the swamp,
And so you dance for a brighter silence.

—Paul Auster (1947–2024)

'Spokes' was published in the March 1972 issue of POETRY magazine bit.ly/4b3f9sH

The sun continues to brush
orange light intermittently
everywhere despite the intimate
annihilations, this weeping sea.

—Krista Franklin with the #PoemOfTheDay written after Kara Walker's 'Blue.' Visit the Poetry Foundation to see Walker's BACK OF HAND. bit.ly/3PJGZ4t

Congratulations to the Region One competitors moving on to the PoetryOutLoud final round tomorrow: Nyla Dinkins (DC); Willow Peyton West (WV); and Jesse Leitzel (SC)! Honorable mention: Luca Wilson (NJ).

Watch the National Finals on arts.gov tomorrow at 7pm ET.