poetry reading for the feast of St. Brigid

Every day is poetry day for me, but in blogland Feb. 2 marks the annual silent poetry reading for the feast of St. Brigid.

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

A snippet from NPR commentator Jay Keyser on "The Snow Man."

In years past...
2008 (A.E. Housman)
2007 (J.R.R. Tolkien)