April is National Poetry Month. What if you read a poem a day for the month? What’s the worst that could happen?
You can register with the Poetry Foundation’s Poem-of-the-Day and they’ll send you a link to a different poem every day. Or if you prefer Garrison Keillor’s mellifluous tones, you can sign up to get a link of an archived Writers’ Almanac entry (which includes a poem) every day. Or if you feeling particularly ambituous, you could memorize a poem!
Here’s a handful of short poems to get you started.
No Man is an Island by John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
This is kind of an anomaly: it isn’t really a poem, it’s actually a passage from his larger prose work called Devotions upon Emergent Occasions; also it might be better known as the title from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
John Donne was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.
The plum you’re going to eat next summer by Gayle Brandeis
doesn’t exist yet; its potential
lives inside a tree you’ll never see
in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched
by a certain number of water droplets
before it reaches you, by certain angles
of light, by a finite amount of bugs
and dust motes and hands
you’ll never know. The plum you are
going to eat next summer will gather
sugar, gather mass, will harden
at its center so it can soften toward
your mouth. The plum
you’re going to eat next
summer doesn’t know
you exist. The plum you are
going to eat next summer
is growing just for you.
This poem was featured as part of the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series in April 2025 and went viral when Hoda Kotb recited it on an Instagram post.
Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road? by Robert Hershon
Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?
What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand
from Poetry Northwest, Volume XLI, No. 3, Autumn 2000
Poetry Daily, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Invitation by Mary Oliver
Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles
for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air
as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,
do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life
This poem appeared in Red Bird by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press, 2009
Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer by Wendell Berry
When I rise up
let me rise joyful
like a bird
When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf
From “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer” from The Mad Farmer Poems. © 2008 by Wendell Berry
