BETWEEN THE LINES

Book Talk by Joe


April Is National Poetry Month

We are all poets.

Who among us has not strung two lines together in rhyme, or created a descriptive phrase that exactly captured the essence of what we were describing, or composed a funny limerick in the back of our seventh grade English class, or just sat on top of one our magnificent red rocks and watched in wonder as the clouds floated by.

It doesn't matter whether we ever committed any of this to the written page. We are still all poets. And, April is National Poetry Month.

We all doubtless still remember some of the poems we had to memorize in school, by Emily Dickenson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost. On our own, we probably discovered the works of Walt Whit-man, maybe even Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And the epiphany of realizing that all of Shakespeare's plays were poetry as well.

Living in Northern Arizona, we are very fortunate to be exposed to the poets and poetry events of the NORAZ Poets, one of the most active organizations of poets in the country, under the creative and innovative direction of Christopher Lane. This issue of Kudos will most certainly list several poetry events that are happening this week alone.

So celebrate National Poetry month in your own personal way. Dust off that old anthology on your bookcase and re-read some old favorites. Or, go out and buy the latest book by Billy Collins or Czeslaw Milosz. Or, keep it local and read or listen to the works of Betteanne Rutten, Mary Heyborne, Karen Merveldt, Rochelle Brener, Gary Every or Christopher Lane, to name just a few.

Or, maybe write some poetry. Open that blank journal you bought a couple of years ago and baptize the first page with the words and phrases that have re-cently been on your mind.

Or, just go out and sit on one of our magnificent red rocks and watch the clouds float by.

Oh, and one more thing…the first person to email me with the name of the cur-rent poet laureate of the United States will win a book of poetry.