This year, Mass Poetry will offer its second annual Common Threads group reading and discussion program for April, National Poetry Month. The texts of the poems, video of the poets reading their poems and poems from those no longer with us, and a discussion guide, questions, and links will all be available on our website in early March. So start planning your April discussion soon! We urge libraries, schools, churches, senior organizations, colleges, bookstores, and book clubs to plan a reading and discussion of these great poems. Check back here soon to download the kit.
Lloyd Schwartz, Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at UMass Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator for NPR’s Fresh Air gives his take on the Common Threads program:
Our 2012 selections:
- “The Author to Her Book” – Anne Bradstreet ( 2012 is the 400th anniversary of her birth)
- “The Fire of Drift-Wood”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Poem 1129 – Emily Dickinson ( tell it slant)
- “For the Union Dead” – Robert Lowell
- “The Hardness Scale” – Joyce Peseroff
- “Horseface” – Sam Cornish
- “if see no end in is” – Frank Bidart
- “Out at Lanesville”- David Ferry
- “Baseball” – Gail Mazur
This will be a rich and varied, yet interconnected collection of wonderful poets from our Commonwealth. They will lend themselves to great discussions and enjoyment, span some very different forms.
Make sure you plan to organize a group discussion. For those of you not in organized groups, plan to have 10 friends over for a National Poetry Month potluck—with poetry as the main course.
A highlight of the festival, the Common Threads poets will read and discuss their works at a Saturday session.
