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#NPRpoetry, Part Deux: Listeners Bare Their Souls In Stanzas

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Time now for more of your poems. And guess who's back with me - Colin Dwyer, NPR digital producer and the curator of our Twitter poetry call out for this month of April.

Hello, Colin.

COLIN DWYER, BYLINE: Hello.

KELLY: So when we talked with you yesterday, you were telling us about a lot of the haikus coming in. And before we move on, I want to play one more haiku. This one came in from @lookatthathair. We actually sent this one to Sylvia Poggioli to read to us from Rome...

DWYER: Fantastic.

KELLY: ...And you're about to hear why.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: (Reading) Love Italy tales from Sylvia Poggioli. An autograph, please?

KELLY: (Laughter) Hard to top Sylvia, who sounds good even reading the phone book, but especially good reading that poem. Now you also mentioned yesterday this - you know, you're getting a lot of haikus because people are tweeting, so they don't have very many characters to deal with here. You're noticing another form of Japanese poetry coming in, too, though.

DWYER: Right. Funny enough, haiku isn't the only form of traditional Japanese poetry that our readers are absolutely loving. There's another one called tonka that we've gotten a couple of. And here's one from Carol Johnston. (Reading) I hold up traffic mesmerized by swirling confetti petals, my car in a vortex of blossom wind.

KELLY: So a tonka there in honor of the cherry blossoms around us right now. Tell us what else has come in.

DWYER: Well, there have just been a number of them that have just sent me reeling, frankly, including this devastating one. (Reading) Honey and apricot and hands like old maps. She died. Oh, thank God, I would think in two months, that summer before the towers fell down.

KELLY: Lovely. Thank you for reading that to us. That's NPR Colin Dwyer, our digital producer, Twitter poetry maestro. Thanks for stopping by.

DWYER: Of course, thank you very much.

KELLY: And keep your poems coming. We want to hear all your poems this whole month of April. You can tweet them to us using the hashtag #NPRpoetry. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Colin Dwyer covers breaking news for NPR. He reports on a wide array of subjects — from politics in Latin America and the Middle East, to the latest developments in sports and scientific research.
Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.