Celebrating World Poetry Day with a Poem about Poets

World Poetry Day is celebrated on 21 March 2023. It’s not just Poe’s Raven and T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month…” you should know. There’s also Maya Angelou and Amanda Gorman too.

Statue of Longfellow in Portland, ME.Photo byMike Durkin Flickr.

On World Poetry Day, we celebrate the art
Of poets who speak straight from the heart
They paint with words and evoke emotion
Their works live on like a timeless potion.

21 March marks this special day
A time to read, write, and have our say
From Homer to Rumi, from Whitman to Frost 
Their words and wisdom are never lost.

World Poetry Day is celebrated annually on 21 March. It was first declared by UNESCO in 1999. It’s a day to celebrate the diversity of languages, cultures, and expressions through the art of poetry. 

Let’s meet a few of the world’s poets.

Oprah's Tweet about Amanda Gorman.

Shel Silverstein’s “Dirty Face” we cannot replace “My darling dirty-faced child?”

You must know Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” “…beneath our feet, and long the mile.”

Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” cried for “The dinosaur, who left dried tokens Of their sojourn here…”

And what of Emily Dickinson’s “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers…” isn’t it, my dear?

Langston Hughes once said, “Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” But he also said. “I too.”

And what of William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” would that not do?

For it quotes Petruchio saying, “I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua.”

Then, why say, “I go from loving to not loving you,” Pablo Neruda?

I guess we shouldn’t leave out Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

A genuine Mainer, Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” should not be forsaken.

Thoreau wasn’t a Mainer, though he did write “The Maine Woods,” so many thought him one.

And what of Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.”

With that last, perhaps our poem, too, is done,

though there are many other poets to discover, or perhaps you are one?

“Maine, the Way Life Should Be!”

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About the author

Stephen Dalton is a native of Old Town, ME, and a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. He is a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Top Writer in Travel, Food, Fiction, Transportation, VR, NFL, Design, Creativity, Short Story, and a NewsBreak Community Voice Pro.