In celebration of National Poetry Month, the entire campus community is invited to join the Campus Poetry Project sponsored by the English, Foreign Languages and English as a Second Language Department.
Throughout April, be on the lookout for poetry postings in the Campus Chronicle and on digital monitors across campus, as well as our cardboard poet cutouts and poetry lawn signs. Take a selfie with your favorite poet!
This year, the American Academy of Poets is highlighting this verse: “we were all made for something” (Ada Limon). That is why we decided to focus on poems about work this year. We’ll include songs and lyrics about work, too! (Below is the official 2023 National Poetry Month poster from the American Academy of Poets.)
Please click here for a link to 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month in the Classroom (or anywhere).
Today’s Poem
(Shared one day early.)
“Find Work”
by Rhina P. Espaillat
I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life’s little duties do—precisely
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—
—Emily Dickinson, #443
My mother’s mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,
moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue
and country heart anaesthetized and mute
with labor. So her kind was taught to do—
“Find work,” she would reply to every grief—
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.
Source: Poetry
Rhina Polonia Espaillat was born in 1932 in the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. After Espaillat’s father opposed the regime, her family was exiled to the United States, where they settled in New York City. She began writing poetry as a young girl, first in Spanish, then English. She has published eleven collections of poetry in both languages.