P is for Poem

Every successful poem is a micro-transformation, both in the reading and in the writing. As I’m sure you’re aware, April is not only blog challenge month, it’s also National Poetry Month. When I first began writing poetry seriously, back in 2004, I learned that to write poetry, I had to read poetry.

I started collecting subscriptions to daily poems arriving in my email inbox. Today I’m presenting a roundup of those subscriptions. I still subscribe to all of these. Some mornings I’m too busy to read them all, but the poems sit there waiting for me, and on a quiet weekend, I immerse myself in poetry surprises.

I don’t always like or even understand every poem I get, but I like to know what is possible in a poem. Experimental forms sometimes find their way into my writing, with the encouragement of my poetry critique group (thanks, guys!). Here’s the list:

Daily Rattle

Knopf Poetry (only during April of each year)

Poem-a-Day   I like reading the poet’s comments at the bottom of each poem.

Poetry Daily

Poetry Foundation

Poetry Today This is Maya C. Popa’s Substack. She posts several times a week.

The Slowdown (also a podcast; curated by Major Jackson)

I’m sure there are more out there that I haven’t heard about. There are lots of Substack accounts that are “poetry-adjacent,” so that’s a good place to search if you like to read about poetry.

If you have a particular favorite daily poem email that’s not on this list, I’d love to hear about it.