Fireworks over Green Lake in Seattle, July 4, 1947, courtesy of MyGreenLake.com

The 4th of July is the essence of summer. It's also the essence of the U.S. It takes place right at that golden moment, when the weather has grown hot but not too hot. People spill out of their homes in the evening with baskets and coolers full of American food and American beer. Blankets are spread, and bare feet touch grass. Everyone comes together, to one place, laughing and smiling and playing like children, and the fireworks, always bigger than remembered, crackle in the night sky.

Some people say that so much time has passed that holidays have begun to lose their meaning, but what better way to celebrate being free than to relax under the summer sky, listening to country singers try to define freedom to a twangy tune? What better way than to see and feel and experience things that just cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world?

I hope that everyone has an amazing Independence Day this year! Here's a little poem I love that is just right for the occasion. Not only does it remind me of the end of every 4th, it is beautiful and makes me lay back and think, as a good poem should.


Good Night 
by Carl Sandburg, 1920

Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
         spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
         and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland
cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
        Many ways to spell good night.

So for a while there, I was really into several women poets who had very different styles but still left me with that philosophical, I-just-read-something-deep feeling.  I spend a lot of time sharing my favorite novel reads with you guys, but how many books of poetry have I shown you?  Like three or something, that's how many.  So I've decided to spice things up with 3 more books of poetry I'm sure you'll love.  Enjoy!

1.) The Moon is Always Female by Marge Piercy - Piercy is a very feminist poet, so I'm just warning readers that they might not agree with everything she has to say, especially coupled with the powerful and poignant way she says it.  I, on the other hand, totally agree with her and feel like this is one of the best books of poetry I've ever read.  Well, okay, I may not agree with bisexual polygamist relationships, but I still know a stunning collection of poems when I see it.

2.) Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath - Alright, I do know that there are a million complete-works-type collections of Sylvia Plath out there, but Winter Trees always seems to speak to me more than a hodge-podge collection of anything and everything.  The poems compliment each other, and they're probably some of Plath's best work, all completed within the last nine months of her life.  I know not everyone would agree with my "the best" statement because she has so many very, very famous and quoted poems, but I think it's a good thing to expose yourself to the not-so-known works of certain authors.  I mean, it's great to be introduced to Plath by such poems as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus", but there's so much more to the author than those tidbits, which is especially evident if you get around to reading The Bell Jar.

3.) The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds - Sharon Olds is a poet that has sometimes left me with mixed feelings.  The Gold Cell was one of the first books I read by her, and it managed to capture me.  She's a shock-and-awe kind of poet that says things with so much brass, you just want to look away sometimes.  She's had a life full of something, I'm not sure how to describe it, and she addresses all of that something with vivid attention to detail.  Later, I found her harder to read when I realized that a great deal of the things she was writing about weren't as dramatic or trauma-inducing as her poetry would lead you to believe.  But if you can get past that, it reads like a good bit of dramatic fiction.