Poem in Your Pocket Day

This year's poster.

This Thursday, April 26, is Poem in Your Pocket Day, part of National Poetry Month. It's a day for carrying around a poem to share with "co-workers, family, and friends." If that sounds kinda awkward (especially co-workers. "Here are those TPS reports...and a copy of Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love."), you can also participate on Twitter with the hashtag #pocketpoem, post a link on Facebook, email a poem to friends, or just shyly hoard your poem if you're a total introvert.

Other National Poetry Month traditions include NaPoWriMo (for National Poetry Writing Month, modeled on the writing-a-book-in-a-month event NaNoWriMo), where you write a poem every day in April. I was too lazy to do that this year (and most years, TBH), and now it's the 24th, but at least Poem in Your Pocket Day is something I can commit to!

But which poem(s) to choose? My first thought was "OMG 'The Waste Land' duh! :D !!!" (my first thought for most situations), but then I realized that's not very pocket-sized, so I'll have to keep thinking. The Academy of American Poets has tons of ready-to-print suggestions here, with favorites like Robert Frost's "Design," Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody, Who Are You?" and Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

More places to find poems:
Verse anthologies & volumes on Bartleby.com
Poets.org Library