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Poetry Town Newsletters
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.
JUNE 2026
1 Kenneth Rexroth, Quietly
2 Jeanne Lohmann, The Ice Man
3 Ron Carlson, Baby
4 Charles Harper Webb, Ice
5 Jack Gilbert, South
6 Linda Pastan, Clock
7 Louise Glück, Primavera
8 Dorothy Parker, Penelope
9 Charles Rammelkamp, Hippies
10 Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Elegy for My First Boyfriend
11 Tony Hoagland, Fetch
12 Dorianne Laux, Fast Gas
13 Steve Kowit, Some Clouds
14 Max Garland, Because You Left Me a Handful of Daffodils
15 Jay Leeming, The Light Above Cities
16 Thomas Hardy, At Tea
17 Floyd Skloot, Kansas, 1973
18 Geraldine Connolly, The Summer I Was Sixteen
19 Andrew Marvell, Thoughts in a Garden
20 Timothy Green, First Memory
MAY 2026
1 Edgar Lee Masters, Blind Jack
2 Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet
3 James Tate, Poem to Some of My Recent Poems
4 Neal Bowers, On a Sidewalk
5 Nancy A. Henry, Keys
6 Joyce Sutphen, The Book of Hours
7 Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass
8 Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Learning to Love America
9 Deborah Garrison, To the Man in a Loden Coat
10 Kay Ryan, The Fabric of Life
11 Cecilia Woloch, On Faith
12 Dave Etter, Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon
13 Marie Howe, Marriage
14 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, #22
15 Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
16 Gary L. Lark, Men at the Gates
17 Steve Orlen, Monkey Mind
18 Barbara Bloom, Making Things Right
19 Rick Mulkey, Bluefield Breakdown
20 Thomas Lux, Upon Seeing an Ultrasound Photo of an Unborn Child
21 Ron Lauderbach, Smart Pencils
22 Rosalind Brackenbury, Morning in May
23 Donald Hall, Old Roses
24 Ted Kooser, Father
25 George Bilgere, Deferment
26 Wisława Szymborska, A Few Words on the Soul
27 Lois Parker Edstrom, Choices We Make When We Are Too Young to Make Them
28 Kenneth Koch, Passing Time in Skansen
29 Michael Lauchlan, Detroit Pheasant
30 Dawn McGuire, Dear Salvation Army
31 Jane Hoogestraat, At the Edge of a Time Zone
APRIL 2026
1 Alice N. Persons, Stealing Lilacs
2 Vincent Wixon, Tornado Weather
3 Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Fix
4 Gary Johnson, You made crusty bread rolls…
5 Linda Pastan, To a Daughter Leaving Home
6 Ted Kooser, Lobocraspis Griseifusa
7 Jim Harrison, Becoming
8 Ron Wallace, The Friday Night Fights
9 Charles Goodrich, Vacuuming Spiders
10 Rite Dove, Parlor
11 Charles Wright, After Reading T’ao Ch’ing, I Wander Untethered Through the Short Grass
12 Louis Jenkins, Seagulls
13 Jerry Roscoe, Adequate Love
14 Wallace Stevens, The Death of a Soldier
15 Barbara Crooker, Away in Virginia, I See a Mustard Field and Think of You
16 Donald Hall, The Things
17 Marilyn Donnelly, At the Toll Booth
18 Alan Feldman, The Coyote
19 Jeffrey Harrison, The Day Nothing Happened
20 Lawrence Kessenich, Wild Turkeys
21 Robin Chapman, Enough
22 Maxine Kumin, Appetite
23 William Carlos Williams, Pastoral
24 George Bilgere, Taking Out the Trash
25 Susan Cataldo, Poem for the Family
26 Al Ortolani, Game Prayer
27 Jeff Worley, On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest
28 Lucille Lang Day, Reject Jell-O
29 John Donoghue, Neighbor
30 Robert Gibb, The Nest
FEBRUARY 2026
1 Jo McDougall, Paying Attention
2 Stanley Kunitz, Touch Me
3 Robert Morgan, Rearview Mirror
4 Gary Snyder, We Make Our Vows Together with All Beings
5 Jim Dodge, Mahogany China
6 Frank O’Hara, Today
7 Stuart Kestenbaum, Starting the Subaru at Five Below
8 Carrie Fountain, Heaven
9 Robert Phillips, Skyscrapers
10 John Arthur, America’s Favorite Playground
11 Vachel Lindsay, The Flower-Fed Buffaloes
12 Tony Hoagland, Fortune
13 Tracy K. Smith, My God, It’s Full of Stars
14 George Bilgere, How I Met Your Mother
15 Jim Daniels, The Crucial Lack of Redemption
16 Natasha Trethewey, Graveyard Blues
17 Thomas Hardy, I Look Into My Glass
18 Billy Collins, The Collar
19 Connie Wanek, Tag
20 Al Ortolani, Asphalt
21 Robert Winner, The Instrument
22 James Tate, The Promotion
23 Jack Ridl, The Reunion
24 M.S. Merwin, To This May
25 Jim Garrett, To Avalon
26 Arthur Sze, Xeriscape
27 Eugene Datta, The Foot from Bhuj
28 Pamela Gemin, To the Doe Last Seen Running Up the South Exit Ramp Toward Wal-Mart Plaza
JANUARY 2026
1 Richard Alan Taylor, The Next Generation of Mourning
2 Jack Gilbert, Scheming in the Snow
3 Christopher Howell, Dinner Out
4 Charles Bukowski, No. 6
5 Paul Muldoon, Sonogram
6 May Sarton, Moose in the Morning
7 Stephen Dunn, Briefcases
8 Kathleen Flenniken, Natural History
9 Kirsten Dierking, Greenwich
10 David Citino, Hair
11 Alden Nowlan, Great Things Have Happened
12 Krista Lukas, Morning
13 T.R. Poulson, 573992
14 William Reichard, Dream Home
15 Dana Gioia, Majority
16 Ellen Goldsmith, The Secret of Life
17 Kim Addonizio, My Heart
18 Louis Jenkins, The Couple
19 David Ignatow, Death of a Lawn Mower
20 Diane Lockward, After the Ice Storm My Son Does Not Come Home
21 Bill Knott, The Fate
22 Dan Gerber, Doing Nothing
23 Naomi Shihab Nye, The Art of Disappearing
24 X. L. Kennedy, Street Moths
25 Robert Long, The Muse and I Are Alone
26 Daniel Donaghy, Three Houses, Three Dogs
27 Tom Chandler, 1943 Steel Penny
28 Linda Pastan, Wherever We Travel
29 Gwendolyn Brooks, a song in the front yard
30 James Crews, Awe
31 Bob Hicok, Calling Him Back from Layoff
MARCH 2026
1 Simon Armitage, The Shout
2 John Stone, Walking the Dog on the Night before He Is to Be Fixed
3 Kenneth Rexroth, Open the Blind
4 Stephen Dobyns, No Map
5 John Updike, Island Cities
6 Emily Dickinson, How happy is the little Stone…
7 Billy Collins, The Chairs That No One Sits In
8 Dana Gioia, The Present
9 Edna St. Vincent Millay, Afternoon on a Hill
10 Luci Shaw, Revival
11 Marjorie Saiser, I Didn’t Think I Would
12 Sneha Madhavan-Reese, To Thousand Island
13 Thomas Lux, Refrigerator, 1957
14 Melinda Burns, Cold
15 Valentina Gnup, Song from the Third Floor
16 Rosie King, Old South School
17 Ray McNiece, His Poem
18 Robert Phillips, Instrument of Choice
19 Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Heaven on Earth
20 C.P. Cavafy, Ithaka
21 Mary Oliver, Today
22 Robert Bly, Wanting Sumptuous Heavens
23 George Bilgere, Big Thing
24 Li-Young Lee, Eating Together
25 Lucille Clifton, Hag-Riding
26 David Young, Ohio
27 Ada Limón, What I Didn’t Know Before
28 Connie Wanek, Directions
29 Mark Halliday, Worthy
30 Miroslav Holub, Napoleon
31 Louis Simpson, Graduation
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