Good Friday, Poetry Friday

It is Good Friday, and Poetry Friday (and April ushers in National Poetry Month), and it's also Jazz Appreciation Month, which means our resident jazz expert, Atticus, will be weighing in next week.

For Good Friday (and for Poetry Friday): 

Thomas Merton's "Death" is a beautiful, evocative, sobering ("Take time to tremble lest you come without reflection/To feel the furious mercies of my friendship,/[Says death]) and ultimately hope-filled poem. It speaks for itself, so click on the link to read the whole thing.

In Googling around for Thomas Merton/Lent/Good Friday, I also found this post at New Wood. It's a quote from Thomas Merton's Raids on the Unspeakable and it's perfect for Good Friday. (And I'll be digging further into New Wood. I like his About page, and identify with his feelings of being something of a misfit.)

For More Poetry Friday:

Amy has the round up at The Poem Farm. There's more about National Poetry Month here, at Poets.org and here, at The Poetry Foundation.

For Jazz Appreciation Month:

More about jazz next week (thanks, Atticus) but for now I'll send you to the Jazz Journalists Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities JAM page.