April in Verse

What first comes to mind when you hear the word “April?” Perhaps spring or rain, April Fool’s Day or Easter, or perhaps Earth Day or the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. One April reference you may not know is that it is National Poetry Month.

National Poetry Month was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, and it is a time to celebrate poets and poetry and the integral role that poets have played in our society. The idea of poetry may bring back dire high school memories of analyzing endless poems by Walt Whitman, or more enjoyable ones of reading fun children’s poems that rhyme. Poetry, though, is more than either drudgery or rhyme. It can, among other things, offer a new way to see the world.

It is nearly impossible to choose a poem to share, perhaps because the choices are endless. However, I want to share one poem that reflects the spring season we are beginning.

“Today” by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out, holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white, well, today is just that kind of day.

I appreciate this simple poem written in couplets for many reasons. The sensory imagery is clear and strong. We can likely all recognize spring days with a “warm intermittent breeze” that insist we take a coat along for the cooler moments. And the days after winter has finally gasped its last breath when we can hardly stop ourselves from opening every window in the house just to feel the spring air, insisting that spring is here to stay. Especially in Michigan, we are able to feel what the poet is expressing.

Collins’ visual imagery is also powerful, allowing the reader to see the brick path, the peonies, and the sunlight. Creating vivid pictures in the mind is something that poetry can do in ways that prose often cannot. The second half of the poem seems to have energy and makes the reader want to leave their own “snow-covered cottage” and burst outside to enjoy the blue skies and sunshine and bright spring day. Readers who live in places with long winters will recognize these feelings that the poet has laid out in just 18 short lines.

The winter here in mid-Michigan seems like it is trying to hang on as long as possible, but this poem brings a sense of hope and eagerness for the spring that will surely begin any day now.

Perhaps you, like me, are not a big poetry “fan.” However, this April for National Poetry Month, you may consider stopping into Wickson and asking the generous librarians to help you find a poem or two. You may be pleasantly surprised by what just a few lines can do!

Collins, Billy. “Today.” Aimless Love, Pan Macmillan, 2018.