April has been National Poetry Month, and the celebration here at Suite101’s Poetry has continued non-stop, and of course, it will continue. Every month here is April.
April Poll
This month’s poll asked:
“In April 1996, the Academy of American Poets launched a celebration and called it National Poetry Month. Now annually, April continues the celebration of poetry with poets, publishers, libraries, schools, and bookstores uniting to make the public more aware of poetry. How will you celebrate this 2007 April as National Poetry Month?”
Answer choices were:
- I will read more of the poets I admire 28%
- I will learn more about poetry in general 57%
- I will just pay attention to the poets I hear about no votes
- I will continue to write poetry, but never read any no votes
- What is poetry? 14%
Commentary
For those among the 14% asking “What is Poetry?” I have just the article for you: “What is Poetry?”
Otherwise, my thoughts on this poll are that the new placement of the poll at the bottom of the page has resulted in less poll participation.
Another otherwise, however, is that the participation that did result yielded what seems to be proper answers. The most votes went to the answer stating that the participants intended to learn more about poetry in general. And that is a good thing. I hope all of you who went into National Poetry Month with that intention were successful.
The second biggest vote getter included those who intended to learn more about poets they admire, and that too is a worthy goal for April, National Poetry Month.
I was surprised that no one intended to “just pay attention to the poets I hear about.” My guess would be that that is exactly what most people would do during the month. There are constant reminders about poets and poetry, and it would be easy just to celebrate by noticing those that pop up on the radio, on buses, at schools and libraries.
But the real puzzler was that no one claimed the intention to keep on writing poetry but never reading any. A former poll, Poetry and You, found 29% of the participants making the claim that they write poetry but never read it.
