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

Nine Essential Poems

by Personal Interest

Poetry is doing things with language that exceed the scope of routine communication – it’s rather like painting with words.  I occasionally engage in the process, and a handful of my efforts have appeared in poetry journals.

 

But, I’m a rank amateur; at best, I’ll string together several words in a fashion that isn’t dreadful. Perhaps in my role as a public relations professional I’m slightly more effective at communicating a message. In any case, the nine works briefly discussed below (in chronological order) are examples of poets connecting with the literary otherworld. Though these poems span centuries and represent widely varied styles, each provides a glimpse of poetic perfection.

 

Beowulf (circa 800?), author/authors unknown

Available to us only because a single, hand-written copy somehow survived through centuries of British history, this Old English epic offers a vision of a world where heroism is the most valued currency. I recommend Burton Raffel’s 1963 translation, and also suggest listening to several lines in the original language to experience the ancient music in words that now are understood only by select scholars.

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day / Sonnet 18 (1609), by William Shakespeare

In the pantheon of English writers, Shakespeare occupies the best seat. In addition to nearly 40 dramatic works, he penned 154 sonnets – and this is likely his best. It’s certainly his most often quoted, and while the Bard’s language can be challenging for 21st-century readers, “Sonnet 18” is quite straightforward. Few would argue against it being the greatest love poem ever written.

 

The Old Pond (1686), by Matsuo Bashō

I love the Japanese haiku, with its five-syllable, seven-syllable, five-syllable format and emphasis on nature imagery. Matsuo Bashō is revered as the greatest of haiku masters and his “The Old Pond” – all 17 syllables of it – is generally considered the closest anyone has ever come to writing a flawless haiku.

 

My Heart’s in the Highlands (1789), by Robert Burns

In Scotland, the “ploughman poet” rose from rural obscurity and became his nation’s most beloved writer of verse. Remarkably lyrical, most of Burns’ works function equally well as song lyrics or poetry. In just 21 lines, this particular poem captures the wild beauty of the Highlands, as expressed by a narrator who misses them desperately.

 

Ozymandias (1818), by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Among the best-known of the English Romantics, Shelley’s works were infused with his progressive socio-politics. Using the brilliant metaphor of a half-buried statue, his “Ozymandias” requires only 14 lines to express the transience of human power.

 

I Am the Only Being Whose Doom (written 1836), by Emily Brontë

No other writer fascinates me as Emily Brontë does. She died at 30, leaving behind a single novel, which became a seminal work of English literature. She also produced some 200 poems, which are renowned for the same emotion and wildness that defines her novel. “I Am the Only Being Whose Doom” articulates loneliness and despair with a startling directness.

 

The Raven (1845), by Edgar Allan Poe

Many readers mistakenly think of Poe as a quirky writer of dark tales and the occasional clever verse. In fact, the combined brilliance of his poetry and prose are unmatched by any other American writer. Since being published, “The Raven” has become perhaps the world’s most famous poem – and certainly the only one after which an NFL team is named.

 

Song of Myself (multiple versions published from 1855 to 1891), by Walt Whitman

The centerpiece of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass volume, “Song of Myself” faced immediate hostility because of its structural and rhythmic uniqueness. More recent critics have suggested that every 20th and 21st-century American poet has been influenced by the 1,300-line work.

 

Howl (1956), by Allen Ginsberg

As a college student in 1984, I sat in an undersized lecture hall some 15 feet from Ginsberg while he read “Howl.” It was absolutely spellbinding. The work, 112 lines of free verse, is a shrieking, sometimes harrowing attack on modern society. America’s Beat Generation yielded some remarkable literary works, and “Howl” may well be the finest of them all.

 

Kurt Praschak

Vice President, Public Relations

SCG Advertising & PR

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.