Of course we think poetry is important all the time, but since the Academy of American Poets initiated the celebration of National Poetry Month in 1996, the month of April has been a particularly good time to pay attention to poets and discover the ways poems can enrich your everyday life. Here are a few suggestions:
Read a New Poem Every Day in April
Sign up for A Month of Poems, our email sequence of 30 classic poems that everyone ought to know by 30 different great poets from ancient Greece, medieval China, Renaissance England, and 20th century America. You’ll have a new poem in your inbox to start each day, plus selected resources to help you explore the poet’s life, or the poem’s historical context and influence, or its literary form and techniques.
Buy a Book of Poems
Choose an anthology if you want to browse and discover poets whose work is new to you. Or if you come across a new poet whose work you like in your daily poem reading, seek out one of that poet’s books. Or buy another copy of your favorite poetry book to give away in April.
Find that Forgotten Poem You Heard Long Ago
Most of us have little bits of half-forgotten poems still echoing in our minds from childhood. Finding the whole poem you heard long ago can bring back a piece of your old life, or rereading it can surprise you with what you’ve forgotten.Copy Out Poems To Keep
If you already have a notebook for things you wish to remember, put in a poem. If not, get yourself a nice blank book and start a commonplace book—a notebook for quotations, poems, sayings or passages from your reading that are worth keeping. Copying out a poem by hand makes you look at each word and see how the poem was made.
Memorize a Poem
More even than copying it in a notebook you make a poem truly your own if you learn it by heart.
Read Poems Aloud with Your Family or Friends
Poetry was and is the aural/oral art, meant to be spoken out loud, meant to be heard—and reading aloud is the very best way to appreciate and begin to really understand a poem. Choose a poem you like, read it aloud to yourself to see how it goes, and then read it aloud for real at the dinner table. You don’t have to dissect it or diagram it or make your home into a classroom. Just make sure the television and the stereo are off, give voice to the poem, and listen to how it comes back around into the conversation that evening.
Go To a Poetry Reading
There is nothing quite like the communal experience of hearing live poems recited by the poet, and during the month of April you’re sure to find a choice of readings in your town. Whether you choose to hear a famous poet visiting on a national book tour or to listen to the local unknowns at your local cafe’s poetry open mike, poetry readings are mind-expanding, often fun, inexpensive or free, and above all live entertainment.Listen To a Poetry Recording
The human voice is the best medium for poems. When you can’t be at a live poetry reading, but you want more than the visual experience of letters on a screen or page, treat your ears to recorded poems. Try one of our mp3 picks or visit one of our selected online audio poetry archives for online listening, or buy one of our recommended poetry CDs.
Watch a Poetry Film
If you visit one of our selected online poetry film and video archives you’ll find lots of videopoems, recorded readings and animated shorts—or you can go to the theater or rent a DVD of one of the many feature films that have been made about poets and poetry.
