April has arrived, that season when in many places the growl of a lawnmower replaces the roar of a snow blower. It’s the first full month of spring, when melted ice and snow perform their usual magic, giving birth to daffodils and grass green as the hills of Ireland. Sunlight falls soft as down on the uplifted face and, as Lord Tennyson tells us, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
Meanwhile, the Academy of American Poets is hoping that April will turn our thoughts to poetry. Once again, the Academy has launched National Poetry Month, dispatching posters, books, and creative ideas for reading and composing verse to schools across the country. Many libraries will put up displays of the likes of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Mary Oliver, and some bookstores will hold special readings featuring poetry as old as the ancient Greeks and as new as a sonnet written yesterday by a high school sophomore….