Why? Well, April is – and you can check Wikipedia on this, it’s bondafide fact - the cruelest month, and that makes it the best time for poems. The end.

(Don’t pay attention to what  it says on Poets.org – a website from the Academy of American Poets, the folks who’ve been bringing you National Poetry Month since 1996. They suggest that April was chosen simply because it “seemed the best time within the year to turn attention toward the art of poetry.”

My story’s blatantly truer.)

However, whether or not we trust the facts on Poets.org, they do suggest ways to celebrate.

You could do it up with their “star-studded”  annual Poetry & The Creative Mind Gala at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts -  this year features “readings by Jorie Graham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chip Kidd, Wynton Marsalis, Steve Reich, and other special guests” with VIP Tickets available for the low, low price of $450.00 (contact bharrison@poets.org) and the cheap seats going for $40.00 and up right now.

If you aren’t in New York – or, alternately, if you are in NY and are also broke – they provide a list of 30 other ways you can celebrate National Poetry Month, asking you to “Promote public support for poetry” by writing your Senators or Representatives in Congress  or just to “Play exquisite corpse“.

Additionally, Poets.org is offering you the shot to  sign up for their Poem-A-Day e-mails. Much as you might suspect, should you choose to sign up, you’ll get a poem in your inbox every day, beginning April 1.

While I’m planning  to celebrate April 1 by cuddling up with some liquor before simultaneously memorizing “The Wasteland”, “The Canterbury Tales” and my W-2, even I know that getting a poem a day – or some free lesson plans to use for the month of April – is nothing to sneeze at.

Or, well, maybe it is, if the image they’re using to promote NPM implies that poetry is medicine?

Gasundheit!