April is designated as "National Poetry Month." The purpose of assigning a specialized month was to increase appreciation and awareness of the literary genre that has existed for thousands of years. 

Some of the earliest poetic works can be traced back to 5000 BC. Poetry was uncovered in Mesopotamia on clay tablets written in cuneiform, an early phonetic Middle Eastern language, to explain how kings ruled.

Poetry also evolved in oral presentations--as a way to help historians, who acted as storytellers, relay what was happening at the time. Epic poems painted pictures of historical events like King Gilamesh's reign in 1000 BC in the ancient city of Uruk, later Babylonia. The king was deemed two-thirds god and one-third human. 

Later on, modern poetry evolved at the beginning of the 20th century with masters like Robert Frost, TS Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, and Sylvia Plath, among others, and the current Poet Laureate Ada Limón. There are too many prolific poets to list in a brief blog.

I developed an interest early on in poetry. My definition of poetry is the least amount of words to express the most amount of emotion. This concept presented when I read a poem written by the British poet John Clare in 1844 or 1845 and published in 1848, following his stint at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. It is simply titled "I Am." I find it to be one of the most brilliant pieces of poetry ever written.

Whatever the artist's mental condition at the time (reports said he thought he might be William Shakespeare or Lord Byron), I will never forget the profoundness of the words "my friends forsake me like a memory lost"--so deeply poignant. That sentence pinpoints Clare's feelings of isolation and loneliness in the most elegant way. 

What have poets said about spring? E. E. Cummings (1894-1962), with his unique formatting, compared the season to a hand in his prose, originally untitled. The poet likely wanted to convey the notion that spring is a time of reorganizing one's priorities in a period of transition. Cummings begins with: 

"Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window, into which people look(while
people stare..."

William Blake's "Spring  (1757-1827) puts a whimsical twist on the subject and is more celebratory. It compares the season to a rebirth by highlighting a child and lamb.

With a similar take, William Carlos Williams's poem "Spring and All" (1883-1963) also points to renewal during spring. Williams had been trained as a physician/pediatrician and was a master of imagery. 

Another lovely tribute to spring comes from Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) whose personal troubles were not apparent in "Prologue to Spring."

And finally, Poet Laureate Ada Limón describes the significance of poetry in her life and puts her spin on spring with “Instructions on Not Giving Up." Happy Spring!