Happy National Poetry Month 2026!

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets since 1996. And this year marks the celebration's 30th anniversary! Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

How to celebrate?
- Read your favorite poet again.
- Read some new poetry.
- Find a new favorite poet.
- Write some poetry.
- Leave poems for people to find in public places.
- Read poetry out loud to family and friends.
- Dream a poem.

Throughout April, I'll be posting poems, some by me, some by others, as well as a series of lyrics to popular songs that double as exquisite poetry.

And this year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 30th! Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on social media using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was originally initiated in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.

To kick off the month, here is an incredibly inspiring quote about what it is to write poetry from Maggie Smith:

"Poetry isn’t just something I write, it’s how I move through the world—how I see, and hear, and imagine. It’s a way of being. I wouldn’t have it any other way."
--Maggie Smith, from Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (Washington Square Press, April 1, 2025)

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

https://poets.org/

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith and "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

For National Poetry Month, I will be sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. And I am going to start us with two stunning poems: first up is "Good Bones" by poet Maggie Smith (not the actress), a touching, thoughtful poem that speaks to the instinct to protect but also to the power of the possibilities of life itself.

Good Bones
by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Maggie Smith | Photo by Devon Albeit

https://maggiesmithpoet.com/

Here is a poem that takes this idea of the possibility of making this place beautiful, and gives a roadmap to it. The journey is not easy but it is the only journey worth taking. Here is "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

https://www.instagram.com/naomishihabnye

Just watched...

...Alan J. Pakula's "Love And Pain And The Whole Damn Thing."


After he made “Klute” with Jane Fonda, Pakula directed “Love And Pain And The Whole Damn Thing” in 1973. Starring Timothy Bottoms and Maggie Smith, this film is a sweet, quirky mix of screwball comedy, love story and 1970s counter-culture/isolation film. Bottoms, who plays Walter Elbertson, is an odd young man. We learn that he has been under the care of a psychiatrist in the past and has trouble concentrating in college. There was no name for it then, but now I am sure Walter would be considered a person with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism in which the person maintains cognitive and linguistic functionality. In an effort to occupy his son’s time, and probably out of impatience and an inability to relate to his son, Walter’s father sends him on a bicycle riding tour through Spain for the summer. But he soon ditches the tour and hops on a bus belonging to a totally different tour. There he meets Lila Fisher, played by a young and surprisingly lovely Maggie Smith, on holiday from Bournemouth. She too is awkward and has difficulty with social interactions. Forced to sit next to each other on the bus, they struggle to communicate, perhaps sensing something in each other. Their budding relationship is rocky and fraught with pratfalls (aside from exhibiting excellent comic timing, Maggie Smith is quite a physical comedienne as well!) and genuine efforts to connect on a meaningful level. Watching the two of them play characters who are longing to escape their own personal prisons is fascinating and while I always knew Bottoms’ work as an actor, I have a newfound respect for Maggie Smith whom I have always known as somewhat of a character actress. The two of them are marvelous… together or alone.

Recommend? Yes, it is a sweet and truly funny film and although there are some heavy elements at play on the periphery, I was pleased with the happy ending.