National Poetry Month: Poem a Day
April is National Poetry Month. We’re celebrating with a poem a day, pulled from our collection and featuring local poets as well as those of international renown.
Our poem for Saturday, April 30 is “Study of Two Pears” by Wallace Stevens.
Study of Two Pears
I
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.
II
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.
III
They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.
IV
In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue.
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.
V
The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.
VI
The shadows of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.
—Wallace Stevens
Poster design by Kaimi Lum
Past poems-a-day:
April 1 Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke
April 2 Clearances (sonnet 3), by Seamus Heaney
April 4 Belonging to Sand, by Wilderness Sarchild
April 5 The Island, by Conrad Aiken
April 6 The Garden, by Mark Strand
April 7 The Fawn, by Mary Oliver
April 8 The Long Voyage, by Malcolm Cowley
April 9 How Many, How Much, by Shel Silverstein
April 12 Resume, by Kevin Young
April 13 Bestiary, by Leo Thibault
April 14 Eurydice, by Willa Cather
April 15 Five Stanzas to Thoreau, by Tomas Transtromer
April 16 At Fifteen I Went to War, anonymous (Chinese poet, 120 BCE)
April 19 Puddle, by Wislawa Szymborska
April 20 Testament, by Taras Shevchenko
April 21 Spring is like a perhaps hand, by e.e. cummings
April 22 The Swift, by Eugenio Montale
April 23 Variation on a Theme by Stevens, by Alan Dugan
April 25 An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish, by Marianne Moore
April 26 Question, by May Swenson
April 27 Child, by Sylvia Plath
April 28 It Began With Reading of Antarctic Adventures, by Elizabeth Bradfield
April 29 Eating Together, by Li-Young Lee
