A Quick Guide to National Poetry Month

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The decision to designate April National Poetry Month, I'm disappointed to report, had nothing to do with T.S. Eliot deeming it the "cruelest month," nothing to do with Chaucer's famed preface to the Canterbury Tales, nor anything even to do with Spring. It turns out that the Academy of American Poets, which started the tradition ten years ago, didn't have much choice. February is Black History Month, March is Women's History Month, and April is Dutch Heritage Month...oh yes, you can double park there.

The month-long celebration is intended to draw attention to poetry, and it kicked off this past Tuesday, as it does every year, with a gala at Lincoln Center in New York. The event featured Meryl Streep, Katie Couric, and Oscar winning director Jonathan Demme, among others, reading their favorite poems. The celebs helped lend some glitz (and some attention) to an art that spends the rest of the year as far as possible from show business. It was well-received ...by most. Reaction I found online could be summed up as either "It was wonderful" or "I couldn't hear a thing." Poets, not surprisingly, not so good with things like sound systems.

Today is only April 6th, of course, and National Poetry Month is just getting warmed up. The Academy's website is an excellent place to see what the month has to offer. There you can find information about readings in your area, sign up to receive a poem each day in April, search for your favorite poems and poets, and get information on the Academy's National Poetry Month programs. Here are some of the highlights:

Poems for Your Pocket Day

The Academy has designated April 17th as a day to share poetry. You're encouraged to bring a poem to work or school in, well, your pocket. The academy has a great web page set up where you can print small--and more critically--foldable poems which you pick based on keywords. The word fire, for example, takes you to Gerard Manley Hopkins' tight, fervent poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--

Chríst--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

Too pious for your pocket? Frog links to Emily Dickinson's I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you ‐ Nobody ‐ too?

Then there's a pair of us?

Don't tell! they'd advertise ‐ you know!

How dreary ‐ to be ‐ Somebody!

How public ‐ like a Frog ‐

To tell one's name ‐ the livelong June ‐

To an admiring Bog!

Poetry...Technology (?!)

Sound systems aside, this year's celebration is also surprisingly tech savvy. On the aforementioned 17th, the Academy will unveil a 2,500 poem archive accessible from your iPhone or, I assume, any iPhone-like device (I am not so tech savvy). Poetry fans can access poet podcasts throughout April, and there's even a Poem for Your Pocket widget for Mac users. I'd tell you more about that if I knew what a widget was.

Your Poetry Story

There's also a great feature called Poetfan where you can read stories of how poetry has touched people's lives and even share your own. Here's one of my favorite examples:

I work as a caregiver. I've made a friend working with dementia patients. A former poet, Brina is a 94-year-old woman...My employers believed we would have a lot to talk about. This decision was based on the fact that I have Shakespearean verse...tattooed on my left forearm. Brina and I have perpetually been reading Yeats together...I had planned on my next tattoo being Shakespeare on the occasion of my marriage. It will now be the closing lines in "The Song of Wandering Aengus" when Brina dies: "The silver apples of the moon, / the golden apples of the sun."

These stories of poetry's power won't surprise you avid poetry readers, but they may surprise those unfamiliar with the art. I'd encourage you to use this month as an excuse to spread the word (literally). That is, if you're not too busy celebrating Dutch Heritage.

Comments

[cktirumalai]

Good poets make April new --or leave it alone. I can recommend Philip Larkin's "First Sight," one of the poems in "The Whitsun Weddings."

[picodegallo54]

my two cents....

my generation

they call us boomers
and we go boom
throw ourselves
on the floor
hold breath
turn blue in face
get our way
with our dollar
and our vote

we don"t die and refuse to get old
we hold on tight and won"t let go
this land is our land
not your land
this land is our land

they call us boomers
watch us go boom
they call us boomers

boom
boom
boom

[darker]

I love reading the poetry! But I don't write it myself. KEEP ON TRUCKIN', POETS!!

[HomelandSecurity]

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda?

Ogden Nash

[JerseyBob]

Good essay and thanks for the Academy web reference.

OF BLOOD, OF RED
Debacle of governance
Upon us now.
Phantom bullets in Bosnia
Portend the same.

Prologue now mimes prologue past.
The lie on the hustings
Less arrogant than desperate,
Still a lie.

Beware the deceit:
A reddened bill of goods
For bullets not fired.

[johnnyhempseed]

From your bottomless challis i quaff sweet nectar
In your gentle hills and fragrant valleys ,oblivious with intoxication
Forgotten misery now joy
Aching from the chase ,bathing in your bubbly pools
At once the victor and the vanquished!

[Jude2004]

I celebrate National Poetry Month at my high school library with contests (including one which parodies Kilmer's poem Trees), poetry pillars and walls, magnetic poetry, and more. I asked the office to announce the contests, and the student who read my announcement said, "It's National Pottery Month" which one teacher interpreted as National Potty Mouth. I give up on student announcers. I'm doing my own announcement on Monday.

[Blutus]

And in honor of poetry month, my fervent wish is for

less performance,

more craft
because that
will last.

[Blutus]

A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness


The tall camels of the spirit
Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud
With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the
arid
Sun. They are slow, proud,

And move with a stilted stride
To the land of sheer horizon, hunting Traherne's
Sensible emptiness, there where the brain's lantern-slide
Revels in vast returns.

O connoisseurs of thirst,
Beasts of my soul who long to learn to drink
Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst
That shimmer on the brink

Of absence; auras, lustres,
And all shinings need to be shaped and borne.
Think of those painted saints, capped by the early masters
With bright, jauntily-worn

Aureate plates, or even
Merry-go-round rings. Turn, O turn
From the fine sleights of the sand, from the long empty oven
Where flames in flamings burn

Back to the trees arrayed
In bursts of glare, to the halo-dialing run
Of the country creeks, and the hills' bracken tiaras made
Gold in the sunken sun,

Wisely watch for the sight
Of the supernova burgeoning over the barn,
Lampshine blurred in the steam of beasts, the spirit's right
Oasis, light incarnate.

Richard Wilbur

[ProudAmericanLiberal]

Poetry events are happening all over Denver as well this month.

[Binea]

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! "
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act," act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow.

[Tamsin]

Hi John

In the Spirit of Poetry Month I wanted to introduce myself. I publish my original poetry here on the Huffington Post, Please come and partake in my offerings, www.huffingtonpost.com/tamsin-rothschild.