So, April was National Poetry Month. For a lot of people, that’s National “Who Cares?” Month or National “Ughhh, Poetry” Month. For friends and family of poets, it might double as National “So, when are you going to get a real job?” Month. But for readers of poetry and poets themselves, April is an acknowledgement and celebration of the practice of living life inquisitively, of not taking things for granted, of the struggle to comprehend the world on a deeper level, and of the personal rewards that a handful of metaphors chopped into a string of lines can bring.
As a poet myself, I can say that poetry is also a lifesaver.
The other day, I told my wife I’d written a new poem. Her response was, “Is it good? Is it terrifying, like always?” Fair point: one of the complaints – or, let’s call them observations – I get about a lot of my poems are that they are bleak, especially considering how upbeat and optimistic I tend to come off as as a person. But here’s the thing:
Neurologically speaking, I’m at least minorly depressed most of the time, even when I’m having a generally okay time of things. Despite lacking any desire to take self-harmful action, my mind feeds me thoughts of suicide on an alarmingly regular basis (a couple times a month at minimum). In middle school, I almost listened.
I am not a natural-born communicator, so before I committed myself to the study and practice of writing, living was a much scarier prospect. Like most adolescents, I had a great deal of painful things on my mind and very little means of expressing them. My bottle of emotions was shaking and building in pressure with perfectionism and self-hatred and uncorking it without some intervention would have been impossible or catastrophic.
But then: Poetry.
Fifteen years ago, probably during National Poetry Month, I had to do a 10th grade report on Li-Young Lee, of whom before which I had been completely ignorant. I devoured “Persimmons” and “I Ask My Mother to Sing” (Just typing the title of the latter waters my eyes). It was the first time poetry really connected with me personally. “Persimmons” expressed the struggle to communicate and the malleability of language in a way that resonated deeply. “I Ask My Mother to Sing” was vibrant and sad and triumphant all at once, and its quick, simple language planted someone else’s experience in my head forever after. I got one of my worst grades on that paper, but I gained something far more important: an appreciation of a genre that so many scoff at or view as archaic.
When pop culture remembers that poetry even exists, it typically reduces it to a couplet of trite, overly sentimental rhymes. If not that, poetry is used as a punchline in a comedy, usually to belittle whichever hapless fool expresses interest. The year before my epiphany, Newsweek published an opinion piece called “Poetry is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?” That was just 2003’s entrant in a long tradition of clickbait statements perpetuated across news outlets for decades. It’s an appealing headline, for sure, and one that reinforces the stigma against poetry, but it turns out that people do care. Even the cynical writer of the Newsweek article got around to touting poetry’s value by the end of the piece, but who read that far?
The majority of people may not care about poetry, but perhaps that’s because it has long been introduced in classrooms with an anchor strapped to its ankle, sucked into the impossible depths of confusion by too much focus on overwhelming, ancient poems by the long-dead “Masters.” I can relate. For me, poetry was nothing but an abstract until I read the right poems. There are hundreds of exciting, relevant contemporary poets addressing, with extraordinary clarity, the challenge of living in the modern world with all its disparity, fear, and changes. These poets manage to find joy and hope amidst the struggle – they speak to the disenfranchised and afraid, the hopeful and alone who are yearning to know that someone else “gets” them. During these past few years of heightened social tension in the US, poetry has seen a resurgence. Perhaps, miraculously, more people are finally finding the right poems. To me, it’s fitting that National Poetry Month immediately precedes May, National Mental Health Awareness Month – I’ve struggled for a long time with mental health and poetry has been a constant companion, through the best and the worst. If you or someone you love is lacking poetry in your life, seek help. Poems are easy to find and many of them take less than a minute to read. One might make all the difference.
And if you or someone you love is facing mental health challenges of their own, you’re not alone. There are a million resources out there, but here’s a few:
The National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264
Be well,
~Gabriel
Post Mortem
Robert Cording teaches English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross where he is Professor of English and Barrett Professor of Creative Writing. He has published seven collections of poems: Life-list (Ohio State University Press/Journal award, 1987); What Binds Us To This World (Copper Beech Press, 1991); Heavy Grace (Alice James, 1996); Against Consolation (CavanKerry, 2002); CommonLife (CavanKerry, 2006); Walking With Ruskin (CavanKerry, 2010); and A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems (Wipf and Stock, 2013).
Jeanne Marie Beaumont grew up in the Philadelphia area and moved to New York City in 1983. She holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and is the author of four books of poetry. Her first, Placebo Effects, was selected by William Matthews as a winner in the National Poetry Series and published by W.W. Norton in 1997. This was followed by Curious Conduct, published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2004, and Burning of the Three Fires, published by BOA in 2010. Her fourth book, Letters from Limbo, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in fall 2016. With Claudia Carlson, she co-edited the anthology 
Tina Kelley’s third poetry collection, Abloom & Awry, is coming out next spring from CavanKerry Press. She also wrote Precise and The Gospel of Galore, which won the Washington State Book Award, and co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope. She was a reporter at The New York Times for a decade.
Cindy
JACK RIDL is the author of several collections of poetry — including Broken Symmetry, Outside the Center Ring and Against Elegies — and several literature textbooks. He taught poetry and literature for thirty-six years, was named one of the 100 most influential educators in the world of sport by the Institute for International Sport, and awarded Michigan Professor of the Year by the CASE/Carnegies foundation. He learned about basketball from his father, Hall of Fame basketball coach C.G. “Buzz” Ridl.
Dawn Potter directs the 
Baron Wormser is the author/co-author of fourteen books and a poetry chapbook. Wormser has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. From 2000 to 2006 he served as poet laureate of the state of Maine. The founding director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, he teaches in the Fairfield University MFA Program and at his home in Montpelier, Vermont.
CAROLE STONE is the author of two books of poetry and seven chapbooks as well as many critical essays on writers, among them George Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sylvia Plath. A recipient of fellowships from The NJ State Council on the Arts and residencies at Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland and Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, she is Professor of English Emerita, Montclair State University. She divides her time between New Jersey and East Hampton, N.Y.
Wanda S. Praisner, a recipient of Poetry Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, is the author of Sometimes When Something Is Singing (Antrim House, 2014), 
Kevin Carey teaches in the English Department at Salem State University. He writes poetry, fiction, plays, and the occasional film script. His work can be found in several literary journals, among them: The Apple Valley Review, The Literary Review, The Comstock Review, and The Paterson Literary Review. Kevin is currently at work on a documentary film about Salem poet Malcom Miller. His book of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, is available from CavanKerry Press.
Joan Seliger Sidney is a writer of poetry and children’s books in Storrs, Connecticut. She has written three books of poetry and her work has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. Her poems often bear witness to the Holocaust and her experiences with multiple sclerosis.
Judith Sornberger is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Open Heart (Calyx Books), and five chapbooks, most recently Wal-Mart Orchid, winner of the 2012 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize. The Hard Grammar of Gratitude won the 2010 Tennessee Chapbook Competition. Her other three chapbooks are: Judith Beheading Holofernes (winner of the Talent House Press chapbook contest), Bifocals Barbie: A Midlife Pantheon (Talent House Press), and Bones of Light(Parallel Press).
CELIA BLAND is the author of thirteen books for young readers, including the historical novel, The Conspiracy of the Secret Nine, which was a finalist for the Heckin Award for Children’s Fiction. Her poetry has been collected in anthologies published by 
