A personal poetry collection written with my terrible handwriting in a cheap notebook

A small project I happened to finish in the middle of National Poetry Month

A few months back I ran across someone sharing the idea of creating your own poetry anthology/collection. Not of poems I’ve written but of poems from other poets I’ve appreciated. A personal anthology of favorites.

It felt like a worthy project that didn’t ask much of me beyond something I was already doing - reading poetry.

I started with a cheap composition book, threw it in my bag and made a point of writing down poems I read and connected with in some way.

Poems with emotional power. Poems with surprising turns. Poems that made me laugh. Poems that felt like a kick in the junk. Poems that urged me to want to write my own poems. Poems that for some reasons (often beyond my immediate understanding) said something to me.

I went back to poems I read years ago to make sure I captured some old favorites, but mostly I focused on poets I hadn’t read before. I included poems from books, newsletters, Instagram (my algorithm seems to love Mary Oliver) and more. You could tell when I was reading through a poet’s larger work as their named would pop up repeatedly, or when I subscribed to Sherman Alexie’s Substack.

I wish I had made a notes of where I found the poems, included the date of when I added it and a line or two of why.

Next time.

I’ve already started the next one.

I’d like to share a couple of the poems I included. Here’s the first and the last pages.

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First page:

“Wishes for Sons” by Lucille Clifton

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

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Last page:

“Go to the limits of your longing” by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

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