"won't you celebrate with me" Lucille Clifton

Dear friends,

Happy National Poetry Month! Of course, I celebrate all things poetry 365 (366 on a leap year), but April is the month we pause and come together in our love for verse. It's our human connection, our heartbeat, the language of our being. It's intense and tender. Through poetry, we hear the music of the world we might miss without it. As a poet, I believe it is my job to listen to that music and serve as a vessel so that it might find its way to you, dear reader.

Below are two of my favorite poems of all time. "won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton and "The Promise" by Sharon Olds. What are your favorite poems? How will you celebrate National Poetry Month? Visit the Academy of American Poets, the home for National Poetry Month, for ideas and links to resources. 

Onward with love, 

Amanda 

The Promise

by Sharon Olds 

With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fumé,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid
I’ll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist—and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it—you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

Toi Derricotte is a national treasure! Won't you celebrate her birthday with me? I'll be hosting this star-studded event of sister poets lifting Toi up. Toi will be in the mix! This special event is also a fundraiser for the gift she has given us of Cave Canem.

RSVP Here