Resource Sharing: Jane Yolen’s Poem a Day

One of the inspirations for my poem-a-day practice is Jane Yolen.  In Dec. 2014, I saw a tweet from her offering me a poem a day, delivered to my email inbox.  I signed up.  Since then, I’ve been getting her words everyday, usually before I wake up. 

Today’s poem was a beautiful evocation of rain in Scotland with an epigraph by Tess Gallagher.  In many of her poems, you can hear the children’s poet.  In others, you can hear the grieving widow.  In still others, you can hear the writer playing with language, playing with prompts, struggling with words.  What’s more, she shares poetry resources: websites that have prompts and poems and forms I hadn’t heard of. 

I love the grown-up poems I get from Poetry Daily, American Life in Poetry, and Poets.org, but it’s inspiring to get a poem every day from the same author.  An author with over 325 published books.  An author who could sit back and relax but who, instead, shares a poem with those who request it every day. 

She’s been doing this for over five years now.  Through loss (her husband) and pain (her back), she’s been sharing her work with me across the ether.  I don’t pay her for it (though she does ask that I buy one of her books or borrow one from the library each year).  That’s an easy price.

So, thank you Jane Yolen for your generosity and for the daily inspiration.  Though I’m not yet ready to send out a poem a day, I encourage you to write to Jane and accept hers.  You'll find the directions in the tweet above.