according to the gospel of wikipedia, national poetry month was born when someone took note of black history month and women’s history month and was like:
you know who else
has been massively
disenfranchised by
history and sorely
needs to be
recognized by
everyone including
the highest levels of
government for
30 whole-
ass
days?
obviously….
poets!
at some point, someone else was like:
you know what
would be a perfect tradition
to galvanize
the poets whose
work is constantly
undervalued
underpaid
trivialized and
misunderstood?
obviously…
challenge them to write a poem
everyday
for free!
every april, i’m like:
fuck! if i’m going to continue calling myself a poet maybe i should participate in national poetry month but fuck it’s only day three and i’m already sick of poems just like i was last year when i fell off by day five plus it’s not like the poems i’ve written so far are even that good anyway maybe if i just inject line breaks into my regular writing nobody will notice but let’s be real half my friends are poets and they’re all going to judge me so i should just sit back and watch everyone else compete in this very pretentious marathon ok it’s not fair to call it pretentious just because i’m salty i can’t keep up i mean some people really get something out of it and there are probably also countless people who don’t write poems but love reading them every month maybe it’s what makes them feel like it’s spring maybe 2020 is actually the perfect year to do it since everyone’s staying inside anyway and it’s a great opportunity to pursue a routine i’ve been feeling guilty for over a decade for not maintaining but didn’t i just read like twelve thinkpieces about why if i pressure myself to be productive during the time of coronavirus i’m actually just being a capitalistic pig so maybe i should just watch more tiger king instead but damn do you really want to look back on your life and think about all those times you could’ve written poems but instead watched tiger king i feel like an anecdote like that would make a terrible chapter in a memoir but an excellent segment on this american life damn maybe it’s time for me to start a podcast it can be about writer’s block and how different people deal with it i dunno maybe i should just check my email