The thing about featuring a poem a week for 207 weeks is that you inevitably start to develop a list of favorite poets. Just think of that; I am a person who has favorite poets now. I suppose that means this weekly feature is a success. I was scrolling through poetry online trying to find a poem for today and, as is typical, I found several I liked but I was having trouble finding one that felt right. That is my highly educated and literate way of picking a poem. I read a line or two of poem after poem until one announces itself as the correct choice for the…

William Bronk was born in Fort Edward, New York in 1918 and died in Hudson Falls, New York in 1999. He won the American Book Award in 1982 for Life Supports. He has been called “one of the best, if uncelebrated, of America’s poets.” Bronk served in the army during World War II, taught English at Union College in New York, and managed Bronk Coal and Lumber Company after his father’s death. He said that his poetry was composed in his head as he went about his day and then put on paper when he felt it was complete. He rarely edited his poems once they were written down. Michael…

I featured a poem by Elizabeth Bishop several years ago. You can see that post here. I found today’s poem in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. The brief synopsis of her poetry says “Her ingenuous style and reticent manner, forgoing strain or pretension, led some critics to mistake her as merely agreeable. Praised from the start for their clarity, wittily observed details, and tonal control, the descriptive surfaces of Bishop’s poems yield in fact–through shifting scales and perspectives–to dark, abiding mysteries.” About the size of an old-style dollar bill, American or Canadian, mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays —this little painting (a sketch for a…