Laura Yoo, HoCoPoLitSo Board Member and Associate Professor of English at Howard Community College

March 21st is United Nation’s World Poetry Day.

Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings. Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures. In celebrating World Poetry Day, March 21, UNESCO recognizes the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.

Maya Angelou wrote and read “Brave and Startling Truth” to commemorate UN’s 50th anniversary in 1995.  She says she wrote this poem “for every human being on this earth” – “We, this people,” she says.

So, to celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21st, I shared my favorite poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats on Facebook.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I also asked friends to share a poem, and the response was overwhelming. This anthology of poetry created by my friends was too good to just sit on my Facebook page. It had to be shared with more people. So here it is. [Friends, I hope you don’t mind my sharing.]

Please enjoy my friends’ favorite poems – and go on a poem-hunt and discoveries of your own.

And if you’re inspired, come and experience poetry in real life with Marie Howe at 7th Annual Blackbird Poetry Festival on April 28th at Howard Community College.

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And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both hast and speed
and left it here for fools to read

–Abraham Lincoln’s poem (didn’t know Lincoln write poems!)

Sama

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Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

– Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard”

Liz

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I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

–Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry”

Sarah

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I bathed int he Euphrates when dawns were young.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

–Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

Michelle

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O you whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you;
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.

–Walt Whitman’s “O You Whom”

Juliette

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