To help celebrate National Poetry Month, this poem based on a FAQ page at The Academy of American Poets:

What is National Poetry Month?
Who designated it?
When is National Poetry Month?
Why was April chosen for National Poetry Month?
What are the goals of National Poetry Month?
Does it cost anything to celebrate National Poetry Month?
Shouldn't we celebrate poetry all year round, not just in April?

My questions, exactly. Celebrate, or not celebrate? According to the Academy, "By all means, yes! We encourage the year-round, life-long reading of poetry."

I have been derelict in this regard. Books of poetry intimidate or bore me, both of which reactions do not conjure up evenings cracking them open.

What some call 'found' poetry I read, sure. For example, I have pondered this one when feeling down:

IF YOU CAN BREAK IT WE CAN FIX IT... Perry's Small Engine Repairs.

And gotten a good mood adjustment from:

Injured? In Pain?
Car crash, Whiplash.
Work Injury. Sound familiar?
Neck pain, headache, back pain, fatigue. Depression, numbness & tingling to Arms & Legs. Blurred vision, ringing ears, jaw pain, pinched nerve. Sound AND/OR light sensitivity. Chest pain, anxiety, irritability, sleeping problems, loss of memory, poor concentration. Insurance covers our services in most cases. Work injury. Automobile Injury.

I like that poem, except the poet repeats "Work Injury" unnecessarily. And "Car Crash" is redundant to "Automobile Injury."

We let poets go their own way. They do not have to master sentence structure. Our poets invent their own forms.

When I ponder how much poetry I DON'T read, I feel guilty, just like you. The logical answer to this would be to go out and read some. I often fail to do this, and then I feel even more guilty. After all, we've been told poetry is good for us, uplifting and all that.

Poetry has its charms. It's been claimed that a good poetry class occasionally will transform students failing in a bad school into college students failing in a very good school. At least I think that's what I saw on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago.

Last week I took a mini vacation, and read Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. This book has been praised widely, and is being read by local book groups.

No review here, just my suggestion that you read this one. It's consistently gripping from start to end, and truly, well, curious. How can a non-autistic novelist convince readers he knows autism from the inside? It should not be possible, but Haddon does it here.

Just in time for National Poetry Month (see above) Vintage has published a small collection of Mark Haddon's poetry. If I felt qualified to judge this kind of work, I'd say it's outstanding.

For no reason I can decipher, the book is titled: The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea. A strange little wheel is riveted to the cover so you can rotate the title and see it through a window, along with images of a horse and a little girl and a scary crab-like thing, and so on. You can play with the cover between poems.

Really, I have no idea if it's good poetry or not. But it's good writing. I can vouch for that. It's like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time only much more condensed and personal.

Right about here I'm saying to myself, "condensed and personal?" Hey, it's poetry. What did I expect?

I liked "New Year's Day" and it's short enough to quote entirely:

I walk on powdered
shell for three miles
to the spur's blunt head
where, each year,
something of the ocean
slows and falls
and turns into a yard of land,
and something of the emptiness
we spin through
silts and settles
so that we can walk
a little further
out into the fog."

That one works. My message this week: Read poetry, read Mark Haddon, and as Scoop Nisker used to say, "If you don't like the literature, go out and make some of your own."

Aired Sunday April 23, 2006 at 10:55 am and Monday April 24, 2006 at 8:40 am

NOTES:

The Academy of American Poets; American Poetry Month: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/47

Orders/Information:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. Vintage Contemporaries paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400032717.

The Talking Horse & the Sad Girl & the Village Under the Sea poems by Mark Haddon. Vintage paperback $13.95. ISBN 0307275698.