Free Poster: National Poetry Month 2006

As is the annual tradition for National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets is giving out free posters. Go and place your order before they run out!

I was delighted to see that, right near the center, they cited the closing lines of Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays, a great, great poem. A long time ago, in graduate school, I took a forms class with the poet Kathy Fagan. For our final exam, we had to argue as to whether or not Hayden’s poem was, in fact, a sonnet (I argued that it was).

Simply a fantastic poem, and a great turn at the end. The final line is a heartbreaker.