Sayonara National Poetry Month; Konnichiwa Poetry Year!

You may or may not have known that April was National Poetry Month. Does it really matter? Sort of; it's extra fun to have a month where you can get away with posting quotes and sending all your non-literary friends poems and links. But I recommend doing it all year long. Some will shake their heads and think "Oh, so and so, you never quit, do you?" Others will appreciate the effort, and maybe you'll just make their day. One awesome thing about a poetry month is that many poetry sites will highlight or send you a poem of the day (see the links to your left for great poetry resources).

This month, my favorite poem from poets.org is April 29th's "Sharks in the Rivers" by Ada Limon (look it up!). It's an interesting piece that explores the nature of fear. The speaker is afraid of sharks and imagines seeing them in the river, yet I get the feeling that the "sharks" are a symbol for something greater, an intangible fear, or perhaps all fears in general.

There is an odd humor in the poem, too. The speaker's friend sends her an article from National Geographic that states "Sharks bite fewer people each year than New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records." The speaker walks around saying to herself "Sharks are people too" over and over. It's funny, yet it's not really helpful, is it? Facts and rational thinking have nothing to do with fear.

One suggestion I think the poem makes right off is that one of our greatest fears as humans is relationships with other humans, or how they may go astray. Limon says "We'll say unbelievable things / to each other in the early morning—" Is it possible that we are all sharks? That sharks in the rivers is a reference to humans in the world? Is the speaker afraid of interactions with other people?

Limon ends the poem by talking directly to the river, not to the sharks from which her fear stems, but to the river itself, to the place that breeds sharks. I find that the most intriguing part of the poem. The river is the source of fear somehow. Are these last stanzas, addressed to the river, what she really wants to tell the world?

I want to walk through this doorway
But without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here. I want them to go on without me.

I want them to burn in the water.

It's a powerful ending, and not at all humorous. It's a declaration, a renouncement of fear. I'm left wondering who or what these ghosts are (they are mentioned in the beginning as well). Are they another manifestation of fear or a reference to actual ghosts, deceased people? And desire. The speaker is all desire. "I want them to burn in the water" is a strong image that demands a sort of destruction of fear, of whatever haunts the speaker.

Bravo, Limon. Bravo. I'll be sending this one out to folks all year long!