Note: National Poetry Month begins April 1!
I once worked at a bookstore (far west of here, for those wondering) where the poetry section was in the very back of the shop—a single case, about two and a half feet wide and three shelves tall. The selection stagnated through the months and years that I worked there, because no one ever asked if we had a poetry section.
So I am delighted every time someone asks me where the poetry section is at Still North, which fortunately for all of us, is often. The Upper Valley is full of not just poetry readers, but so many brilliant poets. I could fill an entire issue of Daybreak singing the praises of the many poets who live in the area, but today I’m focusing on one recent collection: Constellation Route by Vermont poet Matthew Olzmann.
If you have not yet read Constellation Route, please do so now, no matter how poetry-averse you think you are. As a former reluctant poetry reader, I can understand the argument that poetry can feel inscrutable, mysterious for mystery’s sake. But in Constellation Route, a collection of letters masquerading as poems, Olzmann turns the ‘you’ that is often left vague in poetry into something concrete and specific. In guttingly funny poems like “Letter to the Horse You Rode In On,” “Letter to a Cockroach, Now Dead and Mixed into a Bar of Chocolate,” and “Letter to Matthew Olzmann, Sent Telepathically from a Flock of Pigeons While Surrounding Him on a Park Bench in Detroit, Michigan,” Olzmann identifies both the speaker and the listener, and then we, as readers, get to delight in the relationship. Olzmann invites us to linger in the moment of what is often left unsaid.
Olzmann’s humor and directness could lull readers into a false sense of security. But despite the humor, these are not lighthearted poems. They are heavy-hitting and deeply perceptive. Olzmann delivers hard truths wrapped up in humor and imagination.
Poetry doesn’t have to be obscure or opaque (though it can be—that’s great too!). This National Poetry Month, I hope you find a way to engage in and celebrate the work of all the poets right in front of you.
Allie Levy owns and runs Still North Books & Bar in Hanover.