Your poetry pill

Knopf has revved up its Poem-a-Day e-mail service for April, which in case you hadn’t hear is National Poetry Month. You give them your e-mail address and they send you a daily poem with links to an audio sample of the poet reading the work. You also get to buy a signed copy of the poet’s book.

The inaugural poem for 2007 is from W.S. DiPiero:

The Hotel Room Mirror

But who was it, then, that made her so unhappy?
—Madame Bovary

A half-room, foreshortened even more
in the huge speckled armoire glass,
the distance chopped, uncrossable,
between your image and where I stood

twiddling the doorknob before I knew
my own key didn’t fit, late night,
your interior so underlit
that bluer shadows oozed your forms.

Already too late, the door
breezed open where your back and thighs
twisted in the green-winged chair,
your body’s light coiled, at rest.

Dressed, angled deeper in the surface,
your man pleaded, hands wide, as he flexed
sharp from the bed’s protesting edge,
the sheets pinwheeled beneath his weight.

Your glance and his (haphazard,
stark and unconcerned) found mine
in the frame, waiting, though I stayed
invisible to myself, my stare

like your bold forms inhabiting
our depth of field, in the scuffed glass
transcribed. It was already still
too late to save you or be saved.

I signed up last year because I realized I haven’t heard of something like ninety-nine percent of the contemporary poets in the world, and I frequently feel the need for more poetry in my life.

If you like the idea of a poem a day to ease your way through the cruelest month, just click here.