Tag Archives: Poets

Today is World Poetry Day | Anne Sexton

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Every year, World Poetry Day is celebrated on March 21st with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression.

Here’s one of my favorites by Anne Sexton, elegantly illustrating our shadow side, at least that’s how I interpret her words.

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

The Dream Fairy

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One of my favorites, poet Thomas Hood, who also wrote A Lake and A Fairy Boat.

This one calls to me, too…

The Dream Fairy

A little fairy comes at night,
Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown’
with silver spots upon her wings,
And from the moon she flutters down.

She has a little silver wand,
And when a good child goes to bed
She waves her wand from right to left
And makes a circle round her head,

And then it dreams of pleasant things,
Of fountains filled with fairy fish,
And trees that bear delicious fruit,
And bow their branches at a wish;

Of arbours filled with dainty scents
From lovely flowers that never fade,
Bright ‘flies that flitter in the sun,
And glow-worms shining in the shade;

And talking birds with gifted tongues
For singing songs and telling tales,
And pretty dwarfs to show the way
Through the fairy hills and fairy dales.

Image curated from Google public domain. Credit to artist.