National Poetry Month

Mass Poetry's reading event!

When did every sliver of our society start having an official month?  We used to move through the rhythm of the seasons, but we now we progress through AIDS Awareness Month, Black History Month, Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, Women’s History Month and now National Poetry Month.  I read that January was Bath Safety Month, although there were suggestions to adopt it as National Hibernation Month.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate history, health, diversity or bath safety, but are we so simple that we need someone to announce an official month long focus?  Perhaps.  
What if we want to read about Harriet Tubman while soaking in our not too hot bath in October?
So as not to complicate matters, I will stay in my official month designation and focus on poetry (only 2 more weeks until my time runs out).  I headed out to the web to see what libraries were doing to celebrate this great art form.
Massachusetts Poetry is a collaborative organization designed to bring poetry to a wider audience.  Their goal is to organize poets across the state in order to make poetry more accessible and mainstream.  In addition to the annual Poetry Festival, now in its 3rd year, the organization sponsors poetry readings in communities, works with schools, prisons and senior centers to encourage poetry and has developed a website to rally any and all poetry troops.
The event that has libraries around the state all fired up is “Common Threads” a program designed to get 10,000 readers across the state to read the same seven poems (the poems, discussion questions and poet biographies are included on the website).  Mass Poetry calls it “an easily digestible way to introduce people of all ages to an important part of our culture and to the beauty of poetry.”  Each poem was written by a poet with strong ties to Massachusetts.  The common thread between the poems (and maybe all of humanity) is that the events we encounter on our unpredictable  journey through life rest in our hearts, shape our understanding and effect our future.  Powerful stuff!
The esteemed selection committee had the epic job determining the seven poems to be included in the program.  Accessibility, diversity of voice, and excellence were their criteria.  Alice Kociemba is a poet who facilitates monthly poetry groups at the Falmouth Library and served as a member of the committee.  She was grateful for all the snow storm induced reading opportunities this winter that allowed her and her colleagues to read mountains of poems but compared the process of building consensus among poets to “herding cats”.  

Since it is Poetry Month, I did make the time to read the poems, but mostly it was because I couldn’t resist clicking on the links.  For some of the poems I heartily wished I could stop by one of the poetry discussion group, hosted at libraries around the state, for a guided discussion.  My degree in English Lit. only proves that I like to read, not that I’m particularly skilled at it.  However, thanks to my east coast past I did enjoy New England Ode by Kevin Young (kind of an inside joke for New Englanders).  Then I clicked on Love Song:  I and Thou by Alan Dugan and fell hard for his practical but thoughtful poem about a marriage.  Again my experience propping up an old house while working on a marriage that approaches the 20 year mark gave me the foundation to connect with Dugan’s message.  I like it so much that I used the links at the bottom of the page to read more about Dugan’s fascinating life (sadly, he died in 2003) and more of his poems (On A Seven Day Diary was tremendous).  

So, once again, I proved myself wrong.  The whole reason I learned more about poetry today was because it was National Poetry Month - so I guess I am simple enough to be led down a narrow path of learning each month - or maybe we are so overwhelmed by our daily lives that we need someone to remind us to stop, think and learn something new.  I’m really looking forward to May...it’s “Get Caught Reading Month” AND “Sweet Vidalia Onion Month”.