Celebrating 2019 National Poetry Month

April 1, 2019

To kick off National Poetry Month, I’d like to share with you five favorite poets/poems that have appeared in the magazine’s pages over the past five years.

Zsuzsa Takács (Hungary), “On Vision” and “Masters Whose Doorsteps,” trans. Erika Mihálycsa (September 2015)

Brenda Marie Osbey (Louisiana/US), “Death by Water Suite” (September 2016)

Craig Santos Perez (Guam/US), “Ode (Ending with a Confession) to the First Mango I Ate on Guam After Decades Away” (May 2017)

Mahtem Shiferraw (Ethiopia/Eritrea/US), Six Poems (May 2018)

Ennio Moltedo (Chile), Five Poems, trans. Marguerite Feitlowitz (Winter 2019)

For a bonus, check out some of my favorite recent interviews with Ted Kooser, Carolyn Forché, Chris Abani, Li-Young-Lee, Alice Walker, and Eleni Kefala.

And on April 18, be sure to take part in the annual Poem in Your Pocket Day. Last year, I chose Jane Hirshfield’s “The Weighing,” a longtime favorite.

University of Oklahoma

Poetry

National Poetry Month

Zsuzsa Takács

Brenda Marie Osbey

Craig Santos Perez

Mahtem Shiferraw

Ennio Moltedo

Photo by Alba Simon

Daniel Simon is a poet, essayist, translator, and WLT’s assistant director and editor in chief. His 2017 edited volume, Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology, 1867–2017, won a 2018 Nebraska Book Award. His most recent edited collection, Dispatches from the Republic of Letters: 50 Years of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (Deep Vellum/Phoneme, 2020), was a Publishers Weekly starred pick. Under a Gathering Sky, his third book of poems, is forthcoming from SFA Press in spring 2024.