april

April is supposed to be the cruelest month, and it does indeed feel cruel in the crunch of tax time, but it's also National Poetry Month (NPM), which makes it one of the best months of the year.

NPM is a monthlong national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets (http://www.poets.org/). The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern as well as to increase the visibility and availability of poetry in popular culture while acknowledging and celebrating poetry’s ability to sustain itself in the many places where it is practiced and appreciated.

Beginning April 1, Poets.org sends one new poem to your inbox each day to celebrate National Poetry Month. The poems have been selected from new books published in the spring. To sign up to receive Poem-A-Day emails, visit http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php.

Celebrate the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 30! The idea is simple: Select a poem you love, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family and friends on April 30.

Inspired by the 2009 National Poetry Month Poster design, the Academy of American Poets invites you to capture and share your own ephemeral bits of verse. Write lines from a favorite poem on a sandy beach, assemble twigs on a hillside, or chalk the sidewalk. Take a photo before it disappears and then:

* Post it in the Free Verse group page on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/freeverse/
* Post it on the Academy's Fan Page on Facebook, or
* E-mail it to freeverse@poets.org.

Include the source of your lines in the photo caption. All photos posted by April 15 will be automatically entered in a contest to win the new "Poem in Your Pocket" anthology and a commemorative piece of jewelry.Selected entries will be featured on Poets.org.

Here's one of my favourite poems. Actually, it's an excerpt; it comes from "And The Stars Were Shining" by John Ashbery:

So -- if you want to come with me,
or just pull at my sleeve, let them make that discovery.
Summer won't end in your lap,
nor are the stars more casual than usual.
Peace, quiet, a dictionary -- it was so important,
yet at the end nobody had any time for any of it.
It was as if all of it had never happened,
my shoelaces were untied, and -- am I forgetting anything?