Unfortunately, I can’t upload an amazing audio slide show I found, but please go here to hear today’s poet: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/nyregion/21poet-ss/index.html
Every day after she puts her 7-month old baby to bed, Tina Chang, Brooklyn’s new Poet Laureate, opens the window of her home office so she can hear the sounds of the city, the voices, the arguing men, neighbors sipping wine on their fire escapes. Then she takes up a lined notebook from the 99-cent store and records the world outside her window. Her first lines are often To-Do lists, recipes, simple thoughts. As she writes, though, things happen. Words take over. Beauty winds its way onto the page containing the poetry she hears from her window.
It’s obviously a pleasure to highlight the magic and grace contained in the work of Ms. Chang. Here she writes on the birth of her first child:
Birthing a Boy
My child was once a thought and he had
no name, locked in the stall of my making.
The child was housed inside me for a long time,
held still in water, his limbs floating on a screen,
fingerprints intricate as aerial maps.