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Wrapping Up 'Muses And Metaphor'

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Finally today, we have the last of our series Muses and Metaphor - for this year anyway. Throughout April, we've been hearing your tweet poems of 140 characters or less. Our series curator, Holly Bass, a poet, stopped by with two more tweets to share with you, and here she is.

HOLLY BASS: Hi, this is Holly Bass and it's been such a pleasure to read your poems all month - all the poems about springtime and parenthood and even about Boston and loss and grieving. And now to close out National Poetry Month, we have a couple of more Twitter poems to leave you with.

This first one is from a northern neighbor in Nova Scotia, Canada. And what I like about this one, it's deceptively simple but if you listen carefully you'll hear this repetitive sound of the O vowel, and it just creates this sort of lulling sound, like a current or ocean waves. So I would say listen for that. And then also of the imagery. Again, very simple but very peaceful and relaxed.

BAUKE KAMSTRRA: My name is Bauke Kamstra. I live on the edge of the American continent in Nova Scotia, Canada, not far from the sea. And this is my poem.

(Reading) I slept deep at the bottom of the river, a stone in my mouth to hold me down.

BASS: And our next poem comes from celebrated poet Richard Blanco. You may recognize his name as this year's presidential inaugural poet. And here is what he composed for our series.

(Reading) All I keep is the bare silent spaces between mountains, the pause between the rustle of every palm, the wind through my fingers.

Thank you for all your tweets. And even though National Poetry Month has come to an end, there's always time for a little Twitter poetry. So just use the hash tag, tmm poetry.

MARTIN: That was poet Holly Bass, the curator of our Twitter poetry series, Muses and Metaphor. And we have one final poem for you we think a fitting end to our series. This one comes from our youngest poet yet, five-year-old Gari(ph) Budarogu(ph) of Gaithersburg, Maryland.

GARI BUDAROGU: And it is not nice to not care. Love, share, care and be fair.

MARTIN: Now we know that went by pretty fast so I will read it for you.

It is not nice to not care. Love, share, care and be fair.

And you know what? The whole month went by pretty fast, so let's take a moment, enjoy all the poems we aired this month. You can do that by going to our website. Go to npr.org/tell me more.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin and you've been listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.