Poetry Friday: Poems Read Aloud

This past Saturday, Dodge Poetry Staff spent the day with the 11 Dodge Poets who will be leading Spring & Fountain sessions all across New Jersey starting this month. For this meeting, we all get back to the heart of the Spring & Fountain model – the pleasure of being read to.

Dodge Poets and Poetry staff approach the meeting the same way that a teacher would experience a Spring & Fountain session — we all bring 4 poems or excerpts, and choose one to share aloud. It’s a rejuvenating day for us and the poets, and we all come away with a giant packet of great poems to take home; some which are new to us, and some that are renewed by hearing them read by others. It’s a treat!

We want to share the poems that were chosen and read on Saturday. We’re always surprised by the poems that are shared. We hope they will be a nice read for you as well. Enjoy!

“Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

“Drinking a Sonoma Gallo Reserve Merlot, Alc. 13.9% by Vol” by Alan Britt

“For Radha, Two Days Old” by Elyse Fenton

from Henry V (Saint Crispen’s Day Speech) by William Shakespeare

“Love Poem” by Donald Hall

“Lucky House” by Cornelius Eady

“Lullaby” by Reetika Vazirani

“Song of the Barren Orange Tree” by Federico García Lorca (trans. by W.S. Merwin)

“The God Abandons Antony” by Constantine P. Cavafy (trans. by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard)

from “The Echoes Return Slow” by R.S. Thomas

“The World Inside This One” Jean Valentine

from “Two Poems About Nothing,” (first poem) by Gregory Orr.

“When They Ask Me My Name” by Aracelis Girmay

For more information on Spring & Fountain and other Dodge Poetry programs,
visit our website www.dodgepoetry.org