My Month of Poems

I don't know if I came up with this idea or if I read it somewhere but I wanted to post a poem a day for the month of April, which is National Poetry Month. I remembered kind of late on the first and went straight to the Duino Elegies. There are poems, specific lines from poems that live in me. I can grab them at will. I wasn't sure I could get through the month.
It became immediately obvious that I needed a plan. I didn't know if many people would read a whole poem but I did think they might read a line or two. I feel like many of us hold a line or two from a poem in our heads (hearts). So I carved out fragments, which ended up being so much fun. A fragment that stands alone often changes and doesn't even call out the rest of the poem. There were a few times when I posted a whole poem. I posted part of The Red Wheelbarrow even though the whole poem would have fit because if you read or study poetry you probably have your own version of that one. I was kind of hoping people might post theirs. Some poets write in long lines and I didn't even want to carve lines.  It was a challenge. Uncle Walt does not write in Tweets. I only broke one line, the line from Howl.
Awhile ago I asked R to move my poetry shelve down so I could reach it. I don't know why I put it up so dang high in the first place. A month or so ago I moved it again. Now the poetry is right beside me when I sit in my little library. The nest had poetry books scattered about all month. I have one book of poems many of which are old school. I was surprised by how many of them I knew and how much of them I knew by heart, like the Song of Hiawatha. Similarly one night I woke up reciting the Gettysburg address. I know way more of it than I would have imagined. I think memorizing poetry, bible verses and such was a big deal when I was a kid. I may get a word or two wrong.
The best part of the whole month was "meeting" Sparrow. I've been reading Sparrow for years, Mostly in The Sun. I went looking for him on the Google machine because I wanted to include one of his poems and found him on Twitter. I followed him right away and .... he followed me back!!! It really made me happy.
It was fun to see who responded to what. Jabberwocky got the most response. I'm not sure everyone saw everything because of the way Facebook and Twitter feeds move. Today, the last day I posted a poem of my own. I write so few. They usually come to me fully formed. I may work on them a little but not much. I'm not trying to be a poet. 
I never really know what to do on Twitter. This was a lot of fun. I'm not sure if I'll do it again but there were a lot of poets I would have could have used. I just liked the nightly ritual of looking for a poem.