Poetry Month

National Poetry Month: Our Favorite Books of Poetry

by Public RelationsSCG News

Poetry Month

New Jersey-based writer Amiri Baraka said, “Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.” For this year’s National Poetry Month – also known as “April” – we’re examining a key commonality between poetry and music.

 

For decades now, some popular musicians have focused as much attention on complete albums as on individual songs. A few of these – the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black come to mind – became signature creations, with levels of artistic and cultural influence that outstripped any of the included songs. With poetry, there have been books/collections with similarly huge impact. For the sake of clarity, we’re talking about groups of poems the poet intended would exist together and which were published during or soon after the poet’s lifetime. This is to differentiate from the type of “complete works” volume that’s essentially a publisher’s creation.

 

So, with that said, following are Lupe’s five favorite poetry collections.

 

  • On Love, Charles Bukowski, 2015
  • Rest in the Mourning, H. Sin, 2016
  • Nothing Memorable Stays the Same, Kyle Fasel, 2018
  • I Would Leave Me If I Could, Halsey, 2020
  • Love By Night, SK Williams, 2021

 

“I tend to enjoy a lot of free verse poetry,” Lupe emphasized. “It makes me feel like I’m reading a journal entry because there’s little to no structure to what’s being written. For a lot of authors, it’s to their disadvantage to have lack of structure, but not these authors.”

 

In chronological order, Kurt’s list of his five favorite poetry collections – those from the past century, at least – is as follows:

 

  • Death of a Natural Man, Dylan Thomas, 1938
  • Montage of a Dream Deferred, Langston Hughes, 1951
  • Howl and Other Poems, Allen Ginsberg, 1956
  • Paterson, William Carlos Williams, 1946- ‘63
  • Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, Warsan Shire, 2022

 

“With poetry, I’m most intrigued by a work or works that broke figurative new ground,” Kurt explains. “I love the idea of a poet creating something that’s different in style or content – or both – than what’s been seen before.”

 

At SCG, we are – first and foremost – communicators. We exist and thrive in a realm of shared ideas, created visions, and directions changed. In a frequently black-and-white world, our expertise lies in countless shades of gray. And that’s why we so love brilliantly executed poetry.

By Lupe Dragon, Public Relations Specialist/Account Executive and Kurt Praschak, Vice President, Public Relations

A Poet on National Poetry Month

by Personal InterestPublic Relations

Since way back in 1987, I’ve earned a living as a public relations professional. I was a reporter before then, and wrote upward of a thousand newspaper articles. I’ve been an absolute Facebook addict for the past 13 years, and I’ve penned a few freelance magazine pieces. I’ve dabbled in writing fiction, with an emphasis on novels and screenplays, I’ve been known to occasionally slap acrylics on a canvas, and I’m an inveterate consumer of podcasts.

In essence, I’m a communicator. I’m naturally inclined to convey and consume information, whether in the form of facts or feelings. It’s what I do for a career and it’s how I prefer to spend my spare time.

This said, I’ve long been convinced that the purest, most potent form of written communication is poetry. It’s this perspective that makes me an appropriate author for our agency’s latest blog, since April happens to be National Poetry Month.

Both as a reader and writer, I’ve been invested in poems since I was quite young. And in the time necessary for me to transform from student to practitioner of the art, my personal style took shape. I dispensed almost completely with rhymes, but embraced alliteration. Never comfortable with lines, and less so with stanzas, I’ve come to employ a breathless, stream-of-consciousness style that to an inflexible English professor might seem suspiciously like a run-on sentence.

Over time, I’ve enjoyed some entirely non-financial success, with my poetry selected for inclusion in a variety of literary publications. One of these (“Concordance of Color,” from the spring 2015 edition of Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine) follows here, because it seems awkward to discuss creating poems without also sharing a sample.

As if God spent an hour fingerpainting with white and black tempera, streaking November’s sky in unsettled grays, mostly dull, with a whisper of threat, and walking below I watch the drab shades run, seeping down on trees, across lawns, transforming unremarkable structures into mansions of film noir moodiness, absent all hues, save for you — solely immune to this visual desolation — sauntering in a concordance of color, of crimsons, blues, yellows, drifting along, and I’m induced to follow, enthralled by your conspicuous magic.

There’s a kinship between writing poetry and crafting fine furniture, sculpting with clay, or tinkering with an engine. For me, words are the wood or clay; punctuation the wrench set or lathe. And with any of these creative endeavors, nuance determines excellence. Many a word may be suitable to convey meaning, just as any board can become a shelf. But whether with word or board, there’s only one perfect fit.

What captivates me is the pursuit of the ideal word or phrase – the delicate, precise construction that can stir darkness or light in a reader’s heart. Communication is my compulsion, and there are things only poetry can express.