April is National Poetry Month. Why April? I guess they wanted it to be during the school year, and February was already Black History Month, and March already Women's History Month, so April was the next available month for a PR campaign.
The most famous poetic reference to April is probably the opening line to Eliot's The Wasteland--"April is the cruellest month"--which has the deliberate effect of undercutting a lot of swooning ideas about spring time and poetry. It's not my field, but I suspect the statistics on suicide and hospitalizations for depression might bear out the truth of Eliot's assertion. People see the world in bloom, every pulse quickening--except their own, and the contrast is crushing.
Anyway, in honor of National Poetry Month, here's another poem, this one by Robert Frost, having to do with spring. It's called "Nothing Gold Can Stay."
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Comments