National Poetry Month Celebrates Silver Anniversary This April

April 2021 marks the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of poets and poetry. Launched in April 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets not only play an integral role in our culture but that poetry matters.

Say the word poetry, though, and many cringe, connecting their aversion to school room experiences that required dissecting a poem for its hidden meaning. The image from “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins of tying a “poem to a chair with a rope and [torturing] a confession out of it; . . . beating it with...