“The designation of April as ‘National Poetry Month’ suggests special pleading and a strategy of containment-as if all other months were thereby declared poetry-free zones. For poets, readers, and even inadvertent overhearers of poetry, however, there is a constant stream of poetic activity, private and public, involving poets both new and old.” But “if National Poetry Month can offer something other than hype, let’s make it an opportunity to give our national discourse the scrutiny our best poets have always given to language.”