To celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service, 50 poets are writing about a park in each of the 50 states. Some poems speak of the splendor of nature, while others focus on the struggles of human beings. All of them make emotional connections to place.
Photo: G. Gardner, National Park Service
The poetry was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets as part of “Imagine Your Parks,” a grant program from the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the National Park Service. The idea is to use the arts to connect people with the memorable places within the national parks.
Each Thursday this fall, five poems are being published on a special website, “Imagine Our Parks with Poems.” As of last week, half of the poems have been published. The one for Washington state is still to come. The following is a sampling of the poetry. For more information, click on the name of the poem or the author.
