It took me forever to pick a poem to feature today. Partly because I am ridiculously indecisive at times and partly because I have featured almost 300 poems and I can’t remember what I have used and what I haven’t. After a quick search, I found that Langston Hughes only appears once in this series. That is a bit of a crime. Let’s remedy that immediately. Well, son, I'll tell you:Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.But all the timeI'se been a-climbin' on,And reachin' landin's,And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the darkWhere there ain't…

It isn’t really autumn yet since it will be 82 degrees today. However, the leaves are just starting to change, and the nights are becoming cooler. Robert Frost seems to be an autumn poet for me and I have featured a poem of his most years. I am getting a bit ahead of myself because I miss autumn in New England but here is this year’s Robert Frost poem. All I want is to go apple picking and then bake all the things with the bags and bags of apples I bring home. My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fillBeside…

Denise Levertov was born in England in 1923. From the beginning, she had great confidence in her poetry even sending T. S. Eliot some of her poems. She was only twelve years old at the time. Eliot responded with a two-page typewritten letter offering advice and encouragement. Levertov moved to the United States after her marriage. Her verse is “frequently a tour through the familiar and the mundane until their unfamiliarity and otherworldliness strike us.” I have a small grain of hope—one small crystal that gleamsclear colors out of transparency.I need more.I break off a fragmentto send you.Please take this grain of a grain of hopeso that mine won't shrink.Please…