National Poetry Month is a teetotaler who lives it up for exactly 30 days every year, then pours herself into the backseat of a taxi and winds through rain-slicked streets headed home, warbling "How Dry I Am" and wearing someone else's clothes. Whew. What a party.
Did everyone notice how absolutely nothing changed? There's still poetry hurtling at us from every direction, that glorious canvas clears itself every day, and not a single one of us would trade in what we do for anything else.
I feel about National Poetry Month pretty much the same way I feel about African-American History Month. Thanks for the honor, but we're so much bigger than that.
Patricia Smith (she/her) has been called “a testament to the power of words to change lives.” She is…
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