George Bilgere
poetry & readings
POETRY TOWN NEWSLETTER
This free email newsletter is delivered daily to your inbox. Every day George selects a poem by a writer he’s crazy about and he says a few words about why he picked it. Use the Subscribe button on the bottom of this page to receive Poetry Town tomorrow.
These are the 2025 issues of Poetry Town. Click here for the 2024 issues.
APRIL 2025
1 Philip Larkin, The Trees
2 Barbara Crooker, Tomorrow
3 John Kenney, Are You in the Mood?
4 Ernest Hartsock, Strange Splendor
5 Czeslaw Milosz, Encounter
6 Terrance Hayes, What I Am
7 Ron Padgett, The Stapler
8 Reed Whittemore, The Lovers
9 Jeanie Greensfelder, Birth and Death
10 Tomas Tranströmer, Allegro
11 Ada Limón, How to Triumph Like a Girl
12 Connie Wanek, Umbrella
13 Tim Seibles, Naïve
14 Mark Nepo, Not According to Plan
15 Elizabeth Kuhn, Bathrooms
16 Ellen Bass, The Thing Is
17 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
18 Dorianne Laux, Dust
19 Kim Stafford, For the Bird Singing Before Dawn
20 Bill Holm, Sparrows
21 Linda Pastan, Bess
22 Louise Glück, Nostos
23 Dana Gioia, Summer Storm
24 Alicia Ostriker, Song
MARCH 2025
1 Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Aanabhrandhanmar Means “Mad About Elephants”
2 Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
3 Robert Frost, Unharvested
4 Wesley McNair, The Rules of the New Car
6 Jeffrey Harrison, Interval
7 William Meredith, Marriage Tree
8 George Bilgere, The Forge
9 Mark Halliday, Quite Frankly
10 Marcus Jackson, Whereabouts
11 Lynn Powell, Acceptance Speech
12 David Wagoner, The Escaped Gorilla
13 Maxine Kumin, Game
14 Carol Ann Duffy, Tea
15 Ann Higgins, Cherry Tomatoes
16 Wendy Cope, A Reading
17 John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
18 W.H. Auden, Epitaph on a Tyrant
19 Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Afraid So
20 Sara Littlecrow-Russell, Apology to the Wasps
21 Thomas Lux, Ode to the Joyful Ones
22 Billy Collins, Hippos on Holiday
23 Naomi Shihab Nye, What Is Supposed to Happen
24 Joseph Stroud, Knots
25 C.G. Hanzlicek, Egg
26 Brian Bilston, Refugees
27 Wislawa Szymborska, Vermeer
28 Tom Hennen, Plains Spadefoot Toad
29 Simon Armitage, Hercules
30 James Wright, A Blessing
31 James Crews, Love What Comes
FEBRUARY 2025
1 James Tate, Treason
2 Harvey Shapiro, New York Notes
3 Naomi Shihab Nye, The Time
4 Jared Carter, Early Warning
5 Billy Collins, Adam Names the Fish
6 June Robertson Beisch, Lobster
7 Marilyn Donnelly, On Mondays
8 Barbara Quick, The Bread My Mother Gave Me
9 Charles Wright, 15
10 Thomas Lux, A Streak of Blood That Once Was a Tiny Red Spider
11 Connie Wanek, Girdle
12 Grace Cavalieri, Tomato Pies, 25 Cents
13 Faith Sheirin, Picking the Kitten
14 Kim Dower, They’re Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu
15 Ramon Montaigne, On the Beach
16 Richard Wilbur, A Barred Owl
17 Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Bus Stop
18 William Notter, Half-Rack at the Rendezvous
19 Tony Hoagland, Field Guide
20 Michael Milburn, To My Son’s Girlfriend
21 Simon Armitage, Evening
22 David Budbill, What We Need
23 Dan Gerber, Only This Morning
24 Margaret Hasse, What the Window Washers Did
25 Paul Hostovsky, Gauguin’s Grandson
26 Galway Kinnell, Promissory Note
27 Beverly Rollwagen, Up and Down
28 David Lehman, February 7
JANUARY 2025
1 Annie Lighthart, The Hundred Names of Love
2 Charles Bukowski, the great escape
3 Michael Ryan, When I Was Conceived
4 Twyla Hansen, For No Good Reason
5 Sally Fisher, Where I Come From
6 Patrick Phillips, The Singing
7 Olivia Stiffler, Grandchildren
8 Jennifer Maier, Love at First Sight
9 Alarie Tennille, In the Beginning
10 Robyn Sarah, Riveted
11 Mark Halliday, Chicken Salad
12 Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World
13 John Ashbery, Composition
14 Daniel Hoffman, Ants
15 Ross Gay, Wedding Poem
16 John Arthur, Wayfare
17 June Robertson Beisch, The Titanic
18 Jeanne Lohmann, Reminders
19 Robert Bernard Hass, Siren
20 R.S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet
21 George Bilgere, Zero
22 Donald Hall, Old Timer’s Day
23 Malena Mörling, For Bartleby
24 Sebastian Matthews, American Image
25 Robert Phillips, The Changed Man
26 Louis Jenkins, A Disappointment
27 Miller Williams, Love Poem with Toast
28 Gary Johnson, Montana
29 John Updike, Slum Lords
30 Anne Stevenson, Living in America
31 Kevin Griffith, Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange