Daily Poetry Musing
Apr 01
If you’re a teacher, you probably know that April is National Poetry Month. It’s that month when we pretend that we haven’t been reading poetry all year long and for some reason we need to champion rhythm and rhyme. Charles Bernstein protested 10 years ago that we shouldn’t even have such a month, arguing that it’s about selling poetry books and not about loving poetry. It’s also about donations to (and prestige for) the Academy of American Poets if we’re realistic.
Still, the month is popular with teachers, librarians, and the media. Even TYCA is publishing poetry this month. You can’t escape the event’s success. You’ll see the poster up in your local library. You’ll hear the NPR call-in shows talk to more poets. You’ll see stories in the paper that hail local poets. You’ll pass by a table of poetry books in every book store. You will recognize that this is National Poetry Month.
Setting aside the marketing steamroller Bernstein says is behind the event, much of its success has to do with a key stereotype we hold about the genre. People tend to think of poems as short pieces. We think of haiku and sonnets—not epics. Once you decide that poems are short, manageable things, it’s an easy leap to throwing a poem into whatever you’re doing in April: start your April meeting with a poem, publish a poem a day, teach a poem a day, and so forth.
There’s nothing wrong with adding poetry. I love poetry. I know that I should revel in the notion of a poem for every day. But I just can’t get excited about all these poems people are sharing. I thought for a while that it was the commercial bandwagon of it all that bothered me. I’m sure that’s part of it. I don’t like poetry because it’s cool this month. I just like poetry, no matter what month.
Perhaps it comes down to the fact that I am a poetic hermit. Everyone else is singing Ars Poetica in the cathedral, and I’d just as soon be in my cell quietly contemplating a few favorite poems. It confused me as much as anyone when some inner voice firmly and insistently told me to write about a poem every day this month. I even sent myself a text message reminder:
From: <TENGRRL@###.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:54 AM
Subject: Post a poem a day
Post a poem a day & say why u chose it
Today, I think it’s an attempt to give myself structure and voice again. I’ve been lamenting for weeks now that my personal blog is so empty. I used to post regularly and even had some friends who followed what I said. Now analytics frequently say that no one goes there. I literally get 0 hits recorded. The reason is obvious. I stopped writing. Commands were issued, and, as I wrote to someone yesterday, I shut up for the last three years. I was allowed silly status comments, but I’m not allowed to be myself or say what I want.
It’s not being alone with my thoughts that bothers me. I’ve always been a hermit. It’s that I stopped letting myself think. I stopped saying what I wanted and needed to. Last night, poetry seemed like the best way out. After all, I find myself in my favorite poems. So for the next 30 days, I am going to try very hard to say something daily. Maybe the hits will remain at 0, but in the end, I hope to have my voice back—and perhaps the courage to never let anyone shut me up again.
Apr 01, 2009 @ 15:00:43
Let me be one of the first to comment this month :) I’m one of those that reads poetry all year for the pure pleasure of it. I’m also one of those that looks forward to April’s contrived opportunity to share poetry with the masses. For ten years, which must be the number of completion for Tengrrl, I have used April as a soapbox to share poems at my place of work. I work for an insurance company that employees approximately a thousand individuals and has allowed me to post front and center on the company intranet a new poem each business day during the month of April. The comments I recieve are proof positive not everyone reads poetry like you and I do. Even more they think they don’t like poetry (horrors)until they spend a few days reading the poems I have been able to post: poems ranging from old to the new, structured to concrete, and from nationally known poets to the unknown. If it were not for the artificial opportunity to sell poetry books their might not be enough readers of poetry to buy those books.
I found your site some years back while googling the word Poetry. What google returned was your 35th list of ten. Today I took the oportunity to go through a few of my bookmarked links and walla!
Apr 01, 2009 @ 15:09:04
Thank you for kicking off the comments! I guess as contrived as the event sometimes feels to me, it does help us connect people with poetry. You’re doing that very well, Chip. Keep it up! :)
Apr 02, 2009 @ 06:06:44
I don’t think our culture rewards, or encourages even, introspection or thought unless it leads to something someone can buy. Maybe poetry month is as close as we come to asking people to stop, read and reflect. So, for all its commercial and questionable consumerism tainted elements, it’s still a good thing. And thanks for making it part of your blog. I’ll look forward to following your posts!
svf