April, National Poetry Month

April has been National Poetry Month, established by the Academy of American Poets, since 1996, an opportunity to read and celebrate poetry and learn more about the nation’s historic literature and the work being made now. Poets Out Loud is a web site featuring poets reading poetry, sponsored by the publisher W.W. Norton, which published Robert Pinsky’s anthology on poems to read out loud. There are, also, recommendations for teachers in how to present poetry at Scholastic’s online page and that of TeacherVision.

Poets Jorie Graham, Mark Strand, and Rose Styron participated in the Academy of American Poets April 1st event at New York's Lincoln Center, “Poetry and the Creative Mind,” reciting poetry, as did trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (reading Sterling Brown’s “Riverbank Blues”), actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (reading Akhmatova), scientist Harold Varmus (reading John Donne) and others, an official beginning to April as poetry month.