Late summer is peak bye-bye season! These three poems fit perfectly in your suitcase or moving box. 

"The Summer Camp Bus Pulls Away From the Curb" by Sharon Olds

"Leaving Town" by Jane Kenyon

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by ee cummings 

Listen to what can happen when a poet keeps a sustained gaze on the desolate place that has always been his home. 

Keith Hansen comes back to the mic to read six poems by Don Thompson.

"Flat Earth"

"Water"

"Egret I"

"Buena Vista Slough II"

"October"

"December"

Part 3 of the summer poems series is JUICY! 

"Blackberry-Picking" by Seamus Heaney 

"An Invitation" by Clemens Starck

"Meditation at Lagunitas" by Robert Hass 

Here's part 2 of the "summer poems" series! This one's for you, Farmer Ben. 

"Putting in the Seed" by Robert Frost

"Cutting the Grass" by Clemens Starck

"In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden" by Matthea Harvey 

It's AUGUST!

I had a request for some summer poems and got a little carried away.  I hope you like sunshine, blackberries, nostalgia, and love, because this is just the beginning of a 4 part summer poem series. 

We kick off with

"Summer Moods" by John Clare

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

"Mossbawn: Sunlight" by Seamus Heaney

"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright

3 school poems to kick off summer break!

"Night" by Jill Osier

"M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School" by Philip Levine

"Mrs. Smith 1959" by Kim Stafford

A snowy night, phone calls from beyond the grave... this poem has a lot to recommend it. 

"Visitors From Abroad" by Louise GlÜck 

Let me read to you-- a handful of poems that take us through the year of a gardener/prose poet who is paying attention.

The book I read from is Going to Seed: Dispatches From the Garden by Charles Goodrich 

Sometimes I take on the humbling challenge of talking about a poem that enthralls me but I don't fully understand it, and some of what I understand I don't like, and I can't talk about it without talking about myself...

Those episodes often end up in the burn pile, but this time I offer it to you. 

"I've Been Sitting Here Thinking Back Over My Life" by Charles Wright

How does she do it? Linda Bierds' best poems about historical figures--inventors, scientists, artists--hold an uncanny sense of discovery and inspiration so strong that I find myself holding my breath while reading.

Today's poem takes us back in time to the studio of the brilliant Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

"Stroke" by Linda Bierds from her book First Hand