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Is National Poetry Month Good for Poetry?

© Linda Sue Grimes

In 1996 the Academy of American Poets designated the month of April as National Poetry Month. According to the Academy, the purpose of National Poetry Month is to bring "together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture."

Such a worthy goal might sound innocuous enough unless you consider the opposing views of the widely-noted poet Charles Bernstein. In his essay titled, "Against National Poetry Month As Such," Bernstein rails against the idea of NPM, primarily because he doesn't like the so-called "safe poetry" it supports.

Bernstein prefaces his essay with a play on T. S. Eliot's first line of The Waste Land, "April is the cruelest month for poetry." Then Bernstein immediately backs up his claim:

As part of the spring ritual of National Poetry Month, poets are symbolically dragged into the public square in order to be humiliated with the claim that their product has not achieved sufficient market penetration and must be revived by the Artificial Resuscitation Foundation (ARF) lest the art form collapse from its own incompetence, irrelevance, and as a result of the general disinterest among the broad masses of the American People.

He then goes on to accuse the "mainstream" Academy of promoting only mainstream or "safe poetry" and excluding the innovative poets whose works "form the inchoate heart of the art of poetry." Bernstein argues that the promotion of "easy listening" poetry does the disservice of keeping poetry irrelevant in American culture.

What kind of poetry does Bernstein want? Well, the easy answer would no doubt have to include the kind he writes. But here is what he says, "The kind of poetry I want is not a happy art with uplifting messages and easy to understand emotions. I want a poetry that's bad for you." He enlightens that in 1999 a feature of the Academy was to place poetry in new cars sold by Volkswagen.

Bernstein finds it ironic that one of the claims for NPR is to increase sales of books of poetry; he points out that by advertising the big markets that have squashed the small, independent presses from which most poetry publications appear, the opposite actually happens. And he claims that The New York Times could better serve poetry by featuring more serious reviews of books of poetry, instead of merely claiming to support National Poetry Month. He observes that the lists of sponsors of National Poetry Month seem to be merely advertising themselves because they mention no poems or poets.

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