April

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, a night, a
full moon and --

but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

Sylvia Plath, from a letter featured in The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. 1: 1940-1956

“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton; "The Balance Wheel,"

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a diary entry featured in Rapture & Melancholy; The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay

ALT

Albert Camus, Personal Writings

ALT

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

ALT

Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

Jeanette Winterson, from "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal," publ. in 2011