National Poetry Month, Day 2

I've had this poem on my desktop since October. It caught my attention because it's about photography, but in a time before everyone was constantly taking photos with their phones. These photos were taken with a Polaroid camera. (It's so fascinating to me that a couple of my students have Polaroid cameras, that those are a thing again.)

Polaroid Ode
by Cori Winrock

O four cornered room
in which we tuck the ever-
developing light of our warm
bodies.

Here's the rest.

My favorite part is the ending, which imagines the person behind the camera:

Tell me who was in our living room
to capture this instant, whose hand
was shaking us into existence.

I heard this poem on the Slowdown podcast, hosted by Tracy K. Smith, the last Poet Laureate of the United States. I highly recommend these five minute episodes; they come out every weekday.

Here's another post from 2017 about poetry and photography. I shared Billy Collins' poem "Strange Lands" and then updated it with a poem of my own for the age of social media.

Today Irene Latham posted the second line of the Progressive Poem. She too wrote two lines, for the next poet to pick one.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at https://kaymcgriff.edublogs.org/
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan