April is National Poetry Month: Celebrating Poets and Poems
Emily Boyle
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April must inspire poetry. April showers bring May flowers ... wan that April (Chaucer) ... April is the cruelest (Millay) ... Perhaps that is why the American Academy of Poets chose it to honor past and current poets and, hopefully, to encourage new ones. This year, to celebrate its eleventh annual 
National Poetry Month, the academy is hosting a country-wide Poetfan contest, a Poem-a-Day database, an Internet discussion about the poetry that means the most to us and why, and a gala in New York City. Their website, www.poets.org, also includes lesson plans for teachers and strategies for incorporating poetry into everyday life.
Why dedicate an entire month to poetry? As a high school English teacher, I find poems to be puzzles for my students. We can spend more than thirty minutes negotiating why a writer used a certain word or what message he or she was trying to, oftentimes cryptically, convey. The musicians in my class like the rhythm; the dreamers like poetry's whimsical and non-concrete nature; the romantics like the essence. National Poetry Month also reminds me to celebrate my own personal encounters with poetry: the first time my father read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" aloud; the day my mom handed me Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends; the professor who cried when he read Allen Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California to my college English class; the Emily Dickinson poem my godmother read at my wedding; and the child who proudly turned in her own creations to me during my first year as a teacher.
Poetry doesn't have to be intimidating; and it doesn't have to be the sole property of high academics. It's part of our lives in ways we may not even recognize -- the song we love, the commercial jingle we can't get out of our heads, and the phrases we repeat to our loved ones on a daily basis. April gives us an excuse to celebrate these glimmers.
How can we celebrate poetry along with the American Academy? Here are some ideas:
Why dedicate an entire month to poetry? As a high school English teacher, I find poems to be puzzles for my students. We can spend more than thirty minutes negotiating why a writer used a certain word or what message he or she was trying to, oftentimes cryptically, convey. The musicians in my class like the rhythm; the dreamers like poetry's whimsical and non-concrete nature; the romantics like the essence. National Poetry Month also reminds me to celebrate my own personal encounters with poetry: the first time my father read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" aloud; the day my mom handed me Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends; the professor who cried when he read Allen Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California to my college English class; the Emily Dickinson poem my godmother read at my wedding; and the child who proudly turned in her own creations to me during my first year as a teacher.
Poetry doesn't have to be intimidating; and it doesn't have to be the sole property of high academics. It's part of our lives in ways we may not even recognize -- the song we love, the commercial jingle we can't get out of our heads, and the phrases we repeat to our loved ones on a daily basis. April gives us an excuse to celebrate these glimmers.
How can we celebrate poetry along with the American Academy? Here are some ideas: