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*Risshun means spring in Japanese. Haiku is primarily based around seasons, and spring is my favorite <3

The Academy of American Poets recognizes this creative form of writing and the people behind it all month long, and has been since 1996. As a poet myself, I can appreciate this celebration; and by celebration I mean a good reason to hit up the local library for some new stuff. 

I was just at the library yesterday checking out every physics for dummies-related book I could find for this evening’s exam, and I saw the set-up near check out. They had featured books, old material and new, and even will hold group readings throughout the next few weeks.

While I will most likely make a trip back to the library, after the equations of molecular physics no longer feels the need to eat at my brain, all the poetry you need for now can be found online. Get to it! Read something! 

I can go on about my love for art form and the great American poets that inspired me to write, but there is no way to start Poetry Month quite like Edgar Allan Poe.

The most tragic of American poets, authors, literary geniuses, Poe’s classics like Tell Tale Heart, The Black Cat, A Dream Within a Dream, and The Raven are among my favorite reads of all American writing, including novels.

I posted below a poem by Poe that I came about in my American Poetry and Literature course in college a few years back. We dissected it into pieces, and I fell in love with my professor and classmate’s take on this classic. Take in the metaphors. Read it twice to pick up the pain, suffering and love he has for Annabel Lee. Poe is known to have had great respect for women, and undoubtedly shows his reverence for them in his works, although he was known to have failed deep relationships, after the death of his mother when he was just a young boy.

Without further ado, Poe’s Annabel Lee. Enjoy.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.