On Friday, April 5th, my friend sent me a text: “My poem today is ‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.’ ” She wrote that another friend wanted her to read the poem to him so that he could share it with a “group of older men” who were gathering on that day. I replied to the text with the painful last line of the poem: “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” I spoke to Nancy in the following week, and we discussed my days in St. Louis, and when I introduced her to the poet, Randall Jarrell.
I have two friends named Nancy. I met the first Nancy when I was an older student at Indiana University Southeast, and she introduced me to her sister-in-law, the artist named Nancy. We have corresponded over the years, she from her home in Louisville, Kentucky, and me from wherever I wandered. We’ve shared our mutual love of reading, of writers and music and poets and their poetry. When I shared with her the poem I most love, “A Blessing” by James Wright, she researched the poet and found that Robert Bly was the friend who stopped with him “Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota … “ to see “… the eyes of those two Indian ponies/Darken with kindness.” Nancy loves poetry, as do I.
My second bride called me when her father died to ask about the poet who wrote “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” because she felt that I would know Dylan Thomas. She has memorized Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” having first heard it in the movie, “The Outsiders,” and can recite by heart my own poem, “Baptist Sunday Morning: Hot.” Though I came to love poetry as an adult, I’ve tried to make up for lost time. Each April, I try to post a daily poem on my social media timeline, because April is National Poetry Month. I get responses. A few years ago, my sister sent me a message: “I like what you are doing with the poetry.” Some people post their own favorites as a comment, and one of the most recent responses was a heart-wrenching poem about a man, a woman and a dog. People introduce me to new poets, such as Yi Lei, whose poem, “Flesh,” was offered to me by my friend René.
On my iPod I have a 4-disc recording called “In Their Own Voices: A Century of Recorded Poetry,” which has poets reading their own poems. Though Robert Burns’ brogue can make for difficult listening, when Adrienne Rich is “Diving Into The Wreck,” or Theodore Roethke tells me “I Knew A Woman,” or Langston Hughes recites “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” I can live in the poems and know the ways in which the poets saw their works. My favorite is James Wright’s reading of his poem, “A Blessing.”
It is possible that every month is a “National Something” month. I’m not sure of the origins of the individual designations, but the two months that get the most attention from me are October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month – and April – National Poetry Month. Books of poetry have a large presence on my bulging and buckled bookshelves. When I remember a line from Alan Dugan’s poem, “Love Song: I and Thou,” I look for the book that has the poem and sit to read it again.
There is an old ditty that sings, “April showers bring May flowers;” perhaps the poems of April can flower in May, June and forever.