Yes, April is Poetry Month, a time to celebrate poets and their craft, as David Galef, the creative writing program director at Montclair State University, reminds us.
Galef says he is better known as a fiction writer, but has published over two hundred poems in magazines ranging from The Yale Review to Light Quarterly, one of the only magazines left devoted solely to light verse.
Since Montclarions tend to be proud of their town, Galef wanted to share a pro-Montclair poem he penned. Maybe it will inspire you to write your own Montclair poem and leave it in comments below.
Ode to Montclair
Suburban life is often deemed a snooze,
With verdant lawns to mow—and watch grass grow
And read The New York Times for city news,
But living in Montclair, that isn’t so,
Since half the press corps dwells in our fair town,
Ex-Brooklynites who flee when their kids reach
The age when Public School’s a proper noun,
While down the shore, the boardwalk and the beach
Attract a range from poor to those with bling.
North Jersey has it all: the crowds, the malls,
With more diversity than Queens can bring,
And fun! The range of our diversion galls
Manhattanites who finally venture west
To find that old New York is second-best.