One More National Poetry Month Draws To A Close

This is always such a bittersweet night for me, as I curl up in my recliner before the fireplace with the last volume of poetry of the season and a glass of eggnog. Tomorrow, alas, all the verse will be packed away, the poetry decorations taken down, and the Caedmon Recordings of Poets will be returned to storage for another year. If tradition holds, my wife will give “Edna St. Vincent Millay Reading From Her Poetry” (Caedmon TC 1123) one final spin, and together we will intone along with “Elegy.”

That’s always such a beautiful moment. This year, I’ve no doubt, it will be almost heartbreaking. The month seemed to fly by so swiftly, as we lost ourselves in the festive whirl of poetry readings, office parties, and neighborhood open houses. I try not to let the commercialization of National Poetry Month bother me. But as much as I might think I can simply block out the giant and frequently crass NPM displays at the Barnes and Noble and in the local malls (not to mention the garish advertising supplements for the small presses that tumble from the morning papers each day), I can’t deny that I am occasionally saddened. And I do sense that something important is being lost in our too eager complicity with the retail industry’s headlong rush to make a buck on the season.

I know how important this month is for the continuing survival of bookstores, particularly those independents still hanging on by a thread. I understand that National Poetry Month and the sales it generates can be single-handedly responsible for keeping many of these smaller stores afloat. Yet I think that in the compressed frenzy of the month we too often lose sight of the fact that poetry is best mulled and savored in intimate gatherings, in the privacy of our homes, or in solitude.

I am saddened as well when I hear of school poetry pageants being cancelled over complaints from conservative parents. What kind of a message are we sending to our children when we tell them there is something wrong with a celebration of the great universal spirit which finds its voice most powerfully in poetry?

Tonight, however, as I raise a quiet toast to the waning moments of National Poetry Month, I shall try to push such gloomy thoughts from my mind, and I will share with you one final bit of verse to tide you over until next April:

I’d rather, I can tell you flat,

When for Parnassus bound,

Have authored “Casey at the Bat,”

Than the odes of Ezra Pound.

–Robert Service