Cats & Poetry; Poetry & Cats

Tomorrow is the beginning of National Poetry Month:

National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture. National Poetry Month has been successful beyond all anticipation and has grown over the years into the largest literary celebration in the world.

This event is also celebrated by the League of Canadian Poets, and famously disdained by Charles Bernstein and others. You can participate in the activites in a variety of ways:

• get a Poem-a-Day in your email from poets.org
• get a Poem a Day for April from the Knopf Poetry Center [via Hi Spirits]
• get a Poem a Day  from writers in the schools: send a blank email to mail@writersintheschools.org [via Big Window ]
  
• WRITE a poem a day, or two. Reen challenges: Test your poetic mettle against the horrible regularity of the turn of time. Let me know if you'll be participating, and your name will live in glory in the "NaPoWriMo" section of my sidebar . . .  Drop me a line at reenhead-at-gmail-dot-com to join the merry crew . . . [via Dumbfoundry]

So what has this to do with cats, you ask? Well, as Aloysius tells us in Great Feline Authors: the indigestible furball of the poem:

In the annals of feline literature, few members of my species have actually gotten credit for their own work. Henry Beard, who put together this anthology [Poetry for Cats] recognizes that felines' literary accomplishments stretch back for centuries; the poems are not just for cats, but by cats.

Just a quick search for poetry + cats at Powell's results in 43 matches. Try Google and:

• Cat Poetry at CatQuotes.com
• Cat Poetry at www.cindydrew.com
• Cat Poems at moggies
• Cat Poet's Corner at flippyscatpage
• Cat Poetry at pawsonline

[Several were omitted from this list due to popups and/or obnoxious ads.]

Then we have the individual poems and poets:

• The story of Schroedinger's cat (an epic poem), Cecil Adams
  
• Poem to Mindy, David Jackson
  
• Stray Cat, Francis Witham
• Douglas Clark's Cat Poems
• Explaining Relativity to the Cat, Jennifer Gresham, on The Writer's Almanac site [someone sent me this, who, oh who? was it??] John B. at Blog Meridian sent me this link -- thank you, John!
• my own God Is Watching Us
  
• An Unusual Cat-Poem, Wendy Cope

Cats just are poetic, don't you think?

Enough poetry; more critters:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging

Have a poetic weekend!