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Poetry for plasticity of the brain -- "the comfort food of lit."



National Poetry Month each April is the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, bloggers, and, of course, poets marking poetry's important place in our culture and our lives. 


Poem-a-day




Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.  When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,  The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,  Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots As among grotesque trees. 

Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond.  Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour,  The afternoon sifted coolness And people drew together in streets becoming deserted.  There was a moon, and light in a shop-front,  And dusk falling like precipitous water. 

Hand clasped hand,  Forehead still bowed to forehead— Nothing was lost, nothing possessed,  There was no gift nor denial. 

2. I have remembered you.  You were not the town visited once,  Nor the road falling behind running feet. 

You were as awkward as flesh And lighter than frost or ashes. 

You were the rind,  And the white-juiced apple,  The song, and the words waiting for music. 3. You have learned the beginning;  Go from mine to the other. 

Be together; eat, dance, despair,  Sleep, be threatened, endure.  You will know the way of that.

But at the end, be insolent; 

Be absurd—strike the thing short off;

Be mad—only do not let talk 

Wear the bloom from silence. 

And go away without fire or lantern.  Let there be some uncertainty about your departure.



About this Poem


Words for Departure” originally appeared in Body of This Death (McBride & Company, 1923).


Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She is the author of several books of prose and poetry including The Blue Estuaries 1923-1968 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968), The Sleeping Fury (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), and Body of This Death (McBride & Company, 1923). The recipient of a 1968 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bogan died in 1970.


“Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain "He who won't read has no advantage over he who can't read."

Reading with Ramona

You can make a lifelong impact on a child by reading a story that captures his interest and attention.  Based on the success of Reading Partners students more than double their rate of reading progress while in the program reading with a partner.


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