#Academy of American poets

[amaised44]

[bodyalive]

Tuesday Poem

TUESDAY, FEB 6, 2024  

BY JIM CULLENY

The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings

I am taken with the hot animal of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs

and have them move as I intend, though my knee, though my shoulder, though something is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead

on the harbor beach: one mostly buried, one with skin empty as a shell and hollow

feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft, I do not touch them. I imagine they were startled to find themselves in the sun.

I imagine the tide simply went out without them. I imagine they cannot

feel the black flies charting the raised hills of their eyes. I write my name in the sand: Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls

skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky. I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love. To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow street I am in love. To the roses, white

petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am

in love. I shout with the rough calculus of walking. Just let me find my way back, let me move like a tide come in.

by Donika Kelly from Academy of American Poets, 11/20/17

[agirlnamedbone]

pub. by Academy of American Poets

[various-stormsnsaints]

[theafternoonmoon]

I have a poem (about my cast iron pan!) that is live on Poem-a-Day! Gratitude to the great Sarah Gambito for selecting it. ♥️

[inhernature]

(via Lyz Soto: "Today I Am Full of Birds")

Lyz Soto

1. If you run for too long, you forget everything. Even your limbs become invention. A fallacy of skin you tell yourself you once had when you knew how to be more, so birds are the stories you now tell your flesh. You remind her of the Swift who flies for years, as if land is an impossible trick. You tell her about the Sea Eagle from China lost in America for years. Flying and flying and never finding home. You remember her the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō, the Olomaʻo the Kākāwahie, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane, the Poʻo-uli, the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui, the birds, the birds, the birds. You remember her all the birds who had to be more to be.

2. This morning I am unsure how a bird exists when she has been seen only under glass for more than fifty years. Her feathers a feeble reminder of what she could be. Diminished to a hush of keratin and collagen. This bird once shook the forest with her color.

3. This morning I am not sure how I am still here. Daybreak—               just another process of shedding of peeling back to meat with no     new      skin to shelter.

Every breath, a surprise. The heart beats still. But how—how do we quiet these too loud bones when our seams are worn by so much running?

4. When you finally stop you still feel your insides running. Those involuntary tissues scrambling to burst through your surfaces. What would you do to let them free? When all of you is full of run, you imagine yourself feathers. There is a bird inside you pushing at all your cracks. The punctures of vanes are just more places for you to breathe. This bird inside you would know how to draw breath. This bird inside you would know the song struggling in your throat. What will you do to let this bird free? What will you do to find all the songs you should sing?

5. Today we remember the Kākāwahie. we remember the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō, the Olomaʻo, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane, the Poʻo-uli, the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui.

Today we remember our body before we severed our own wings just so we could hide from the man in the story who would pin all our wings to the ground.

[sswslitinmotion]

National Poetry Month is ongoing. I somehow missed Poem In Your Pocket Day, which had been on April 10, 2025. Last week, I finished reading "And Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou. I'll see what other poetry I may read next. -- ssw15

[rustbeltjessie]

This is a really cool thing that the Academy of American Poets is doing. I’m having my 13 y.o. kiddo do it as part of his schooling, and I’ve decided that I’m going to do it alongside him (though of course I can’t submit my letter, as I am not a student—doesn’t matter, it still seems like an interesting thing to do).

[midnightmindcave]

Today’s poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets should be shared widely:

“When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation” by Kyle Tran Myhre

[frombehindthepen]

Let the National Poetry Month Games Begin!

Let the National Poetry Month Games Begin! #AcademyofAmericanPoets #PoetryCommunity #LiteraryCelebration

Image Credit: Academy of American Poets (The 2024 poster features artwork by award-winning children’s author and illustrator Jack Wong and lines from “Blessing the Boats” by beloved poet Lucille Clifton) Celebrated annually in April, National Poetry Month begins today. We take our coalition of poetry enthusiasts to a new level of awareness during our commemoration. The Academy of American Poets…

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

Academy of American Poets First Book Award

The Academy of American Poets First Book Award is a $5,000 first-book publication prize. The winning manuscript, chosen by an acclaimed poet, is published by Graywolf Press, an award-winning independent publisher committed to the discovery and energetic publication of contemporary American and international literature. The winner also receives an all-expenses-paid, six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center, a 15th-century castle in the Umbrian region of Italy, where they will become part of a cohort of accomplished international artists, writers, and composers; distribution of their winning book to thousands of Academy of American Poets members, making it one of the most widely-distributed poetry books that year; inclusion and promotion in American Poets magazine, the Academy’s newsletter, and Poets.org, among other opportunities. 

This award was established in 1975 to encourage the work of emerging poets and to enable the publication of a poet’s first book. It is currently made possible by financial support from the members of the Academy of American Poets. From 1975–2020, the award was titled in tribute to Walt Whitman.

Submissions for the 2024 Academy of American Poets First Book Award will be accepted from July 1, 2023 to September 1, 2023 (11:59 p.m. Eastern). The judge is Victoria Chang.

Submission guidelines here.

@writernotwaiting - You have a week!

[agirlnamedbone]

pub. by Academy of American Poets

[pantalon-et-colombine]

Jean Cocteau (French, 1889-1963)

1954

Carnaval de Nice

Signed and numbered in pencil, Edition of 57/100

Lithograph

64.77 cm. x 50 cm. (25.5 x 19.69 in.)

Jean Cocteau was a French painter, poet, designer, printmaker, playwright and filmmaker. He is one of the most important figures of French Surrealism, although he always denied being in any way connected to the movement.

Cocteau was born to a socially prominent Parisian family. His father, George Cocteau, was an amateur painter who committed suicide when Jean was only a child. Jean became famous in Bohemian circles as "The Frivolous Prince." In 1912, he collaborated with the Ballets Russes. After World War I, Cocteau met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the artist Pablo Picasso. In 1917, thanks to Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian impresario, Cocteau wrote a scenario for the ballet Parade — the set of this important ballet was realized by Pablo Picasso and the music was composed by Erik Satie. In the late 1920s, Cocteau wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. In 1918, he met the French poet Raymond Radiguet. They worked and went on many journeys together, and Cocteau promoted his friend's works in his artistic group.

Cocteau is well-known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) and the films The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. During World War II, he created sets for the Théâtre de la Mode. In 1955, he was elected to the Académie Française and the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. He was commander of the Legion of Honour, a member of the Academié Mallarmé, the Academy of Arts (Berlin) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.