April is the greening time, when choirs of birds announce the flourishing of bud and bloom, when the good old earth sheds its dull patchwork mantle of gray and brown and bustles with blossoms and new life. April is also National Poetry Month, and this year marks the 25th anniversary of this event. Begun in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, this annual event “has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and of course, poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.” For many years, the number of Americans who read poetry was in decline, but a 2017 survey by the National Endowment for the Arts found that a sea change had taken place. Poets dead and alive had regained some of their audience, with some 28 million adults reporting that …