May continues almost as a second April. Libraries have discovered e-mails from individuals offering programs to celebrate poetry and, though April, National Poetry Month, has slipped by, May is fine for poetry programs.

I’ve been given the opportunity to present a talk on Louise Bogan at the Massachusetts State Poetry Society and it is tomorrow, Sat., May 7  in Reading. Please join me at the Reading Library at 64 Middlesex Avenue and discover or rediscover Louise Bogan, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

Here’s a poem by Louise Bogan that was one of only a couple of poems that Louise wrote after being commissioned. Corning Glassware was planning a design show and paired design glass with poetry.

The Dragonfly

You are made of almost nothing

But of enough

To be great eyes

And diaphanous double vans;

To be ceaseless movement,

Unending hunger

Grappling love.

Link between water and air,

Earth repels you.

Light touches you only to shift into iridescence

Upon your body and wings

Twice-born, predator,

You split into the heat.

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.

But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,

For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall

With the other husks of summer.