Today is the first day of National Poetry Month. It has been 28 years since it was launched, in 1996, by the Academy of American Poets. Thinking about this made me think of my own personal history with poetry.

When I thought of this history, at first, I believed I didn’t have a history with poetry, but then I remembered Mother Goose. Those Mother Goose poems I read as a child were my introduction to poetry. I remember The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat being one of my favorites. Was it because my daddy recited it in his sing-song voice? I remember the melody of it. I also remember the book of Mother Goose poems my siblings and I shared. It was large and red. On the cover there was a white goose with a bonnet on its head and on the lower right side, there was a brown boot representing the house of the little old lady with too many children. It was not, however, until I got older when I realized what poetry could do.

It was through the movie The Outsiders that I learned how special poetry is. In the movie, Ralph Macchio’s character recites Nothing Gold Can Stay to Ponyboy. This poem by Robert Frost came into my life during a time I was in internal turmoil. I viewed myself as an outsider, a black sheep, within my own family and at school. Things were happening in my life. I was more experienced sexually than most of the other girls at school, by no fault of my own. That “experience” alone made me different. I was fourteen when I tried to put words to what I was feeling, and poetry gave me the space to explore. The first poem I wrote, I titled, Hurting on the Inside. It went as follows:

I’m hurting on the inside

And no one seems to know

I guess it’s ‘cause my smile’s so bright

The pain doesn’t show

I need someone to listen

Someone who can understand

Someone who will not make fun of me

And see the pain that stands

I’m hurting on the inside

And I need someone to know

Because my smile is too bright

For the pain to ever show

It was short and concise. It helped me to release. It became my method of expressing myself. Because poetry allows us to process our feelings, I understand why some people say they can only write poetry when they are sad. I was one of those people. I have since come to the realization that when we are sad, we spend more time in thought. Happiness is fleeting and unless we are paying close attention, we oftentimes miss the thoughts which accompany it. Poetry, however, does give us access to process both. It is powerful in that way.

This year during National Poetry Month, I choose to celebrate by reading poetry and writing more poetry. I plan to submit some of my completed poems to literary magazines with open calls for submissions and participate in a poetry writing challenge. What are your plans for National Poetry Month? Will you challenge yourself to read more poetry? Write more poetry? Learn a poetic form with which you are unfamiliar? Let me know in the comments below and if you enjoyed this blog post, click the follow button.