Poetry Friday: Poems Read Aloud

March 1, 2013

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