“The Guitar” by Federico Garcia Lorca

Poetry.

Maybe the last time you picked up a book of poems (if ever) was in high school. You might think they’re boring, inaccessible or just not for you and I’m not one to disagree with the last point. But hear me out for a moment: I have a hunch that given the right poem or hearing the right poet is akin to listening to your favorite musician for the first time. It’s a discovery, an epiphany of a world you didn’t know existed and you feverishly want more. Poetry as an artform does make its way into speeches, newspaper articles and particularly when paired with music, into song. So maybe it’s not poetry you’ve written off, just the idea of it.

April is national poetry month and I would like to be your curator composing my own Annelies anthology of poems. This is not your Norton’s Anthology, and by now, if you stop here often, you might notice I’m a fan of multicultural food, traveling to other parts of the world and international poetry. Shoot, I’m an associate editor for Poetry International, a fantastic annual journal of poems from around the world.

And I want to get you excited about, if not think twice about poetry.

I guarantee every poem will probably not resonate with you and that’s okay. But just maybe, you will hear something that rings true to you. Something that makes your pulse quicken or even makes you tear up. My appreciation for poetry’s complexity and simplicity only grows with time.

If you stick with me through the month, I will share a panoply of poems and think it will be quite a journey.  I may try to pair up poems with recipes- the story-telling need not stop because the form is shorter or different.

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The Guitar
Federico Garcia Lorca from Lorca & Jimenez

The crying of the guitar
starts.
The goblets
of the dawn break.
The crying of the guitar
starts.
No use to stop it.
It is impossible
to stop it.
It cries repeating itself
as the water cries,
as the wind cries
over the snow.
It is impossible
to stop it.
It is crying for things
far off.
The warm sand of the South
that asks for white camellias.
For the arrow with nothing to hit,
the evening with no dawn coming,
and the first bird of all dead
on the branch,
Guitar!
Heart wounded, gravely,
by five swords.

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