It’s National Poetry Month, and poets everywhere are gearing up to write 30 poems in 30 days. I tried the poem-a-day challenge once many years ago, and I have to say that, while I admire those who can commit to such a quick production of work, I myself am not cut out for that sort of speed. It also seemed to me that this year’s National Poetry Month would be a great time to read and think more about others’ work than my own, and to share some finds here on my website. I’m not planning to post poems daily, nor am I promising deep thoughts or heretofore unexplicated findings about poems–just some offerings of pieces I love that I think others will enjoy reading as well.

This past week, I was sifting through some of Alicia Ostriker’s work online, looking for a particular poem I thought I use as a teaching tool in an upcoming workshop. I ran across a poems of Ostriker’s that I’d not read before (let’s hear it for Jstor and The Poetry Foundation for making out-of-print issues of Poetry readily available online!). This poem impressed me so greatly that I’ve felt compelled to read it quite a few times over. Despite a somewhat ominous title, I think it’s a wonderfully hopeful poem in its own way:

“Anxiety about Dying,” Alicia Ostriker, from the July 1979 edition of Poetry Magazine.