Read a poem this month!

In an effort to encourage a lifelong love of poetry, the Academy of American Poets established April as National Poetry Month. The monthlong celebration includes poetry-themed events, inspirational resources, educational materials and poetry parties across the country.

Houston has joined in the celebration with several poetry readings around town including the Houston Public Library's Public Poetry reading series, Inprint's First Friday Poetry Reading Series and the beloved annual A Poem A Day campaign presented by the Writers in the Schools.

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we wanted to share a few stanzas from our top ten favorite poems for your pleasure.

10. If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

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Jaap Blonk

​Damon Smith, a Houston-based double bass player and visual artist, completely remembers the first time he heard an interpretation of Kurt Schwitters's Ursonate, a piece of Dada art that's the sonic equivalent of the readymades of Marcel Duchamp in terms of scope and impact.

"I think to have a sound poem organized in sonata form is ground breaking," says Smith, who first heard the piece performed by Eberhard Blum on a hatART record.

Smith is one of the individuals responsible for bringing Jaap Blonk, who will present Schwitters's sonata that's entirely constructed out of phonetics, to Rice University on Tuesday. Blonk, a Dutch composer, musician and poet, is one of the best performers of the Dada-era piece that should be in the same conversation as visual heavyweights Man Ray and André Breton.

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Just because the economy is in the toilet doesn't mean you should miss out on all of the performing and visual arts happenings in town. Even the most expensive productions have some cheap seats, right? Trouble with cheap seats is you generally get a really lousy view. How about getting a great view to a wonderful event without having to shell out any money at all? Yeah, we thought you'd like that (we know we do). Here are three great events that are free:

The Fat Kitchen

​First, there's "Under Repair - New Works on Paper by Mark Masterson." Houston arts refuge Spacetaker is hosting Masterson's exhibit and to despite the show's title, Masterson's work needs no repair, unless the manner in which he turns his canvas into incongruous folds of fabric makes you uncomfortable. Purposely done and delightfully off-putting, they make you want to find a hot iron to flatten the creases in order to absorb more of the painting. His work sends you to the 16th century, Canterbury Tales-style - some feature medieval doctors performing atrocious brain experiments, while others depict gluttonous dinner feasts.

2 to 5 p.m. Saturday as part of the Second Saturday Open Studios. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays. 2101 Winter Street Studios. For information, visit www.spacetaker.org or call 713-868-1839. Free.

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wristbandconnection.com

​Yesterday, we provided readers with a single line of "bad" poetry penned by local poet Rich Levy in a last-minute telephone conversation. We asked readers to mine their inner anti-poets to help us build, line by line, a notoriously bad poem in honor of National Bad Poetry Day, which is today.

The result is a 12-line poem about a bird, a caterpillar and a nightingale, a social commentary about the high cost of living and some interesting rhymes and spellings. Even our own Steve Jansen and Olivia Flores Alvarez got in on the fun and contributed their own lines, as did Public Poetry's Fran Sanders.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. The final poem, which we're calling "The Nightingale and the Other Bird," lies after the jump.

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​The Internet has shamefully taken the word "epic" and gang-redefined it on a pinball machine while we all look on. Just for the record, here's how Webstor put it...

Well... I'm just a third-rate He-Man villain most of you don't remember. I mean, I'm not really a linguist or anything, but I would define "epic" as related to, or having the characteristics of an epic poem. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's the first definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Okay, so maybe we made that up. But we maintain even though landing a flip is a difficult task worthy of praise, it's not epic. Historically, epics deal with things like wars among the gods, adventures that span years and in which the protagonist encounters obstacles inhumanly difficult. The Odyssey, that's an epic. Deadpool quotes...cool, but not epic.

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wristbandconnection.com

​Bad Poetry Day is almost here, and, as promised, here is the first line of bad poetry in what we hope will be an annual tradition, producing tomes of bad poems and encouraging hosts of bad poets for generations to come.

The first to comment writes the next line of poetry; the next commenter writes the third, and so on, and so on until we feel like we finally have a solidly horrible poem. Misspellings, grammatical mistakes and using words you think mean one thing but actually mean something else are encouraged, but we need you to mine your creative guts to come up with something truly bad.

Much thanks to local poet/Inprint Executive Director Rich Levy, who provided the first line of the poem. "I think it affords opportunities to get some especially bad lines in there," Levy told us after giving us the line. "What does the bird see? How does it feel?"

Your first line is

Once upon a time, a bird flew to the top of a tree

Show us what you got, Houston.

​Thursday is Bad Poetry Day, and Art Attack is calling on our readers to don their berets and turtlenecks and help us write Houston's worst poem.

At 9:30 tomorrow morning, we'll post a single line of bad poetry. Trust us, it will be horrible. The first to comment on the post will write the next line. And then the next commenter will write the third line. And so on, and so on.

This is the first time we've done this, so the round robin will go on until we at Art Attack see fit. On Thursday, we'll post the final product. So let's make it super horrible, Houston.

Show us what you got.

UPDATE: We just got off the phone with local poet/Inprint Executive Director Richard Levy, who, to our relief, wasn't insulted when we asked if he would provide the first line of poetry for our first-ever bad poetry round robin. Instead, he was delighted and has already given us the first line. It's pretty bad.

Jane Tillery Photography

​Poetry ain't dead, y'all (despite what you just read, a.k.a. the most eloquent English-language construction you'll ever see). At least not next week.

For the sixth consecutive year, Word Around Town (WAT) will showcase its annual poetry blowout beginning on Sunday. Spread across seven nights at seven different spots, WAT will feature close to 20 wordslingers, including Brother Said, Teresa Juarez, Dee!colonize and Marie Brown.

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www.outspokenbean.com

Outspoken Bean

​A Cornel West stage sharer, a Texas Observer contributor, an author who dropped a hand-made tome that's covered with fur and a Quarterly West winner.

Yeah, that's a pretty kick-butt way for a new-ish poetry series to keep its forward momentum.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, July 2, Public Poetry is kicking off its Summer Series that will feature namedrop-worthy scribes reading and/or performing poetry for approximately 25 minutes each.

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Steffen Voß

"Just what I wanted!"

​The poems in Kevin Prufer's fifth collection In a Beautiful Country may sound a lot like love poetry, may even employ the same sorts of strategies, particularly the closely observed and tenderly detailed address to the beloved. But Prufer's subjects, in these selfsame poems, are often violence, war, and death. In fact, in "Love Poem" the speaker makes this offer: "I'll make you a bomb. First the booster gas canister,/ then the heat shield, then the radium case, which, yes,/ is shaped like a peanut." Then, "Don't you love me? Love what I've made for you?"

Imagine the beloved trying to keep her composure. What's she going to say? "How sweet of you! It was just what I wanted."

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