Sunday, April 1 marked the start of National Poetry Month, an annual celebration the Academy of American Poets first introduced in 1996, according to poets.org. To commemorate National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world, the King Street Chronicle will publish one poem each school day throughout April.

Linda Pastan
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don’t see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day – the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
Contributed by Bell Choir Director Miss Danielle Gennaro ’05.
– Mae Harkins, Staff Writer