2026 National Poetry Month, Day 08 Birth
Original topic subject: 2026 National Poetry Month, Day 8 Birth
Talk The Poetry Collective
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1DebiCates
An artist rendering of the Big Bang, a supernova explosion. (Photo courtesy of geralt/Pixabay)
NPM 2026, Day 8, Birth
What poems represent "birth" to you?
For this second week of NPM, I thought we could ponder together how poetry fits into the progressive stages of human life. That lebenstreppe, each step of life that represents something new to which we awaken. I think the same could be said for each poem we read. If nothing else, each is a chance to awaken to human connection with the poet who wrote it.
In poetry, we see birth of ideas, new forms, new meters, new rhymes and even the birth of freedoms from those things. We read old poems which gives them life anew. Even new technologies also launch new births for poetry. Like what we do here on Librarything, like the ease with which we can hear poems read aloud, and like the ease these days we can find new poems and contemporary poets.
Each poem, too, is an individual birth. From the moment a poem is first begun it is a birth of creative expression of feeling and thinking.
Is a poem born yet again each time it reaches a reader?
As with every post for NPM, you are welcomed to answer the question or also comment with either a poem you've found or with a poem you've written that you think will go with this day's message.
NPM 2026, Day 8, Birth
What poems represent "birth" to you?
For this second week of NPM, I thought we could ponder together how poetry fits into the progressive stages of human life. That lebenstreppe, each step of life that represents something new to which we awaken. I think the same could be said for each poem we read. If nothing else, each is a chance to awaken to human connection with the poet who wrote it.
In poetry, we see birth of ideas, new forms, new meters, new rhymes and even the birth of freedoms from those things. We read old poems which gives them life anew. Even new technologies also launch new births for poetry. Like what we do here on Librarything, like the ease with which we can hear poems read aloud, and like the ease these days we can find new poems and contemporary poets.
Each poem, too, is an individual birth. From the moment a poem is first begun it is a birth of creative expression of feeling and thinking.
Is a poem born yet again each time it reaches a reader?
As with every post for NPM, you are welcomed to answer the question or also comment with either a poem you've found or with a poem you've written that you think will go with this day's message.
2saskia17
This topic brings to mind Billy Collins, who writes quite a lot of poetry about poetry and writing. Here are four favorites about starting the writing process.
THE FIRST LINE OF A POEM
Before it flutters into my mouth,
I might spend days squinting
into the wind
like an old man
trying to thread a needle
by a window
in the dying light of late afternoon.
In a chair,
he aims the limp end
at the dim glint
of the impossible eye,
narrower than the door of heaven
or the sliver of moon
that will not rise
from behind pines
until the needle
finally slides
along the thin loop
and he eases
into his all-night stitching,
sipping the new wine,
singing a song
the color of his thread.
THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
WORKSHOP
I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.
It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now
so immediately the poem has my attention,
like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.
And I like the first couple of stanzas,
the way they establish this mode of self-pointing
that runs through the whole poem
and tells us that words are food thrown down
on the ground for other words to eat.
I can almost taste the tail of the snake
in its own mouth,
if you know what I mean.
But what I’m not sure about is the voice,
which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,
but other times seems standoffish,
professorial in the worst sense of the word
like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.
But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.
What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,
especially the fourth one.
I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges
which gives me a very clear picture.
And I really like how this drawbridge operator
just appears out of the blue
with his feet up on the iron railing
and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—
a hook in the slow industrial canal below.
I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.
Maybe it’s just me,
but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.
I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?
And what’s an obbligato of snow?
Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.
At that point I’m lost. I need help.
The other thing that throws me off,
and maybe this is just me,
is the way the scene keeps shifting around.
First, we’re in this big aerodrome
and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,
which makes me think this could be a dream.
Then he takes us into his garden,
the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,
though that’s nice, the coiling hose,
but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.
The rain and the mint green light,
that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?
Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?
There’s something about death going on here.
In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here
is really two poems, or three, or four,
or possibly none.
But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.
This is where the poem wins me back,
especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.
I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,
but I still love the details he uses
when he’s describing where he lives.
The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,
the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,
the spool of thread for a table.
I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work
night after night collecting all these things
while the people in the house were fast asleep,
and that gives me a very strong feeling,
a very powerful sense of something.
But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.
Maybe that was just me.
Maybe that’s just the way I read it.
ADVICE TO WRITERS
Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.
Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.
The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.
When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.
From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.
THE FIRST LINE OF A POEM
Before it flutters into my mouth,
I might spend days squinting
into the wind
like an old man
trying to thread a needle
by a window
in the dying light of late afternoon.
In a chair,
he aims the limp end
at the dim glint
of the impossible eye,
narrower than the door of heaven
or the sliver of moon
that will not rise
from behind pines
until the needle
finally slides
along the thin loop
and he eases
into his all-night stitching,
sipping the new wine,
singing a song
the color of his thread.
THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
WORKSHOP
I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.
It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now
so immediately the poem has my attention,
like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.
And I like the first couple of stanzas,
the way they establish this mode of self-pointing
that runs through the whole poem
and tells us that words are food thrown down
on the ground for other words to eat.
I can almost taste the tail of the snake
in its own mouth,
if you know what I mean.
But what I’m not sure about is the voice,
which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,
but other times seems standoffish,
professorial in the worst sense of the word
like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.
But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.
What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,
especially the fourth one.
I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges
which gives me a very clear picture.
And I really like how this drawbridge operator
just appears out of the blue
with his feet up on the iron railing
and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—
a hook in the slow industrial canal below.
I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.
Maybe it’s just me,
but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.
I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?
And what’s an obbligato of snow?
Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.
At that point I’m lost. I need help.
The other thing that throws me off,
and maybe this is just me,
is the way the scene keeps shifting around.
First, we’re in this big aerodrome
and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,
which makes me think this could be a dream.
Then he takes us into his garden,
the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,
though that’s nice, the coiling hose,
but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.
The rain and the mint green light,
that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?
Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?
There’s something about death going on here.
In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here
is really two poems, or three, or four,
or possibly none.
But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.
This is where the poem wins me back,
especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.
I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,
but I still love the details he uses
when he’s describing where he lives.
The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,
the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,
the spool of thread for a table.
I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work
night after night collecting all these things
while the people in the house were fast asleep,
and that gives me a very strong feeling,
a very powerful sense of something.
But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.
Maybe that was just me.
Maybe that’s just the way I read it.
ADVICE TO WRITERS
Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.
Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.
The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.
When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.
From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.
3DebiCates
>2 saskia17: What an utter delight those four poems are. I thought about stopping after each, saving them for one a day. But it's Billy Collins! I can't eat just one chip. Certainly not if there are four.
Love these poems, Nica. Thank you.
One question, was "Worshop" about a real poem somewhere, I can't imagine one with all that in it. Or was that Collins being impish? I love when he's impish.
ETA: and even when he's not.
Love these poems, Nica. Thank you.
One question, was "Worshop" about a real poem somewhere, I can't imagine one with all that in it. Or was that Collins being impish? I love when he's impish.
ETA: and even when he's not.
4saskia17
>3 DebiCates: Glad you enjoyed. You can't stop at one; that's why there's four included at all!
I'm not sure about "Workshop". It's from The Art of Drowning but I don't have any other details about it. He certainly has run plenty of workshops, so I'd guess it was based on an amalgamation of the poems he's encountered over the years, but no idea for sure.
I'm not sure about "Workshop". It's from The Art of Drowning but I don't have any other details about it. He certainly has run plenty of workshops, so I'd guess it was based on an amalgamation of the poems he's encountered over the years, but no idea for sure.
