April is National Poetry Month!
April is National Poetry Month: Celebrating the Human Spirit The greatest poet in the English language, William Shakespeare, was born April 23, 1564 (and died on the same day, 52 years later), so it's especially fitting that April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets, it's "the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary event curators, publishers, bloggers, and, of course, poets marking poetry's important place in our culture and our lives." Poetry, it has been observed, can express truths that are inaccessible in any other medium. It pervades our lives, even when we're mostly unaware of it: in the music we hear, the prayers we repeat, and the core truths that guide us. Most importantly--as Pres. John F. Kennedy observed in his speech "Power and Poetry," in honor of the late poet Robert Frost--poetry expresses the hu
