There have been so many writers and poets who have influenced my work. April is a month dedicated to poetry. This year, I have tried to identify thirty poets who have influenced my work as a poet. One year back in 2017, I dedicated April to Indigenous poets and writers who influenced my writing. I have grown substantially in my poetic craft and my definition of what poetry means to me. How lines are composed, the emotional content, the structure, the narration, the openness, the craft, the metaphor, and the directness of how poems are constructed. These are the many consideration I have learned from each of the poets listed for April. The power of language, and how language defines a sense of a "witness" is what poetry means to me. The ability to document experiences and define those experiences through words. Words transform how I view the world around us. Especially in these times. In the past two years, societies around the world have undergone a huge transformation because of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The pandemic certainly has changed the way I view the world and how I define the experience of thought. The pandemic of 2021 & 2022 has given me time to think about what writing is and how I now choose to work the language. Had it not been for the list of writers for April 2022, my writing would be undefined. So, for that, I will continue to be grateful.
Poem Day 1: "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.
Poem Day 2: "Love In The Asylum" by Dylan Thomas.
Poem Day 3: "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes.
Poem Day 4: "Fork" by Charles Simic.
Poem Day 5: "In A Vacant House", by Philip Levine.
Poem Day 6: "[little tree]", by e.e. cummings.
Poem Day 7: "Winter Trees", by William Carlos Williams.
Poem Day 8: "Epilogue", by Robert Lowell.
Poem Day 9: "Tulips", by Sylvia Plath.
Poem Day 10: "#1302", by Emily Dickinson.
Poem Day 11: "The North", by Tomaž Šalamun.
Poem Day 12: "Open", by Jean Valentine.
Poem Day 13: "Lost Loves", by Galway Kinnell.
Poem Day 14: "Poetry, A Natural Thing", by Robert Duncan.
Poem Day 15: "Decrescence", by Yanyi.
Poem Day 16: "Tormented", by Pura López-Colomé.
Poem Day 17: "Bread", by W.S. Merwin.
Poem Day 18: "August", by Mary Oliver.
Poem Day 19: "Other Horses", by Michael Klein.
Poem Day 20: "Dead Orchard", by Frank Stanford.
Poem Day 21: "Earth Day", by Jane Yolen.
Poem Day 22: "Poem (External Scene)", by Dan Beachy-Quick.
Poem Day 23: "Line of Descent", by Forrest Gander.
Poem Day 24: "Oshi", by James L. White.
Poem Day 25: "A Little Closer to the Edge", by Ocean Vuong.
Poem Day 26: "Katrina", by Patricia Smith.
Poem Day 27: "Anticipated Stranger", by John Ashbery.
Poem Day 28: "Undoing", by Khadijah Queen.
Poem Day 29: "Song, The Winds of Downhill", by George Oppen.
Poem Day 29: "Follower", by Seamus Heaney.
Poem Day 30: "Get Rid of the X ", by Marilyn Chin.
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