April is a lot of things - tax time; showery in order that May will be flowery; the cruellest month (for other reasons).
Speaking of April being the cruellest month, that's from a T.S. Eliot poem. All of you who know which one, raise your hands! (Better yet, post a comment.)
Which brings me to today's post. April is national poetry month, and in the U.S., the 17th of April is Poem in Your Pocket Day.
Poem in Your Pocket Day started out in New York City (of course) in 2002, and now the Academy of American Poets has declared the 17th to be national PIYPD. National = U.S., but it sounds like a good idea, so why not join in?
The idea is to select a poem you love, and carry it with you to share with family, friends, co-workers, strangers and anyone else that day.
On the PIYPD Web site, the Academy has PDFs of some little, portable poems, but unless you choose the Iliad or the Odyssey or some other epic poem (which you could do - you'd just need a pocket that would fit a book), almost any poem will do. I mean, you can print it on both sides of a piece of paper if it runs long, and just fold it up.
Or I suppose you could do what a woman I know is doing to exercise her brain and stave off dementia: memorize a poem. She's memorizing a couple a month. You need just one for the 17th. But put a copy in your pocket so you can share.
"April is the cruellest month" is from Howl. Eliot wrote it during a cross-country trip with Neal Casady. He didn't read it publicly until 1969 in Dallas. Two years later, Kennedy was assassinated. Coincidence? I think not.
ReplyDelete