Many individuals, businesses and organizations across the United States support National Poetry Month. Festivals and workshops are held to celebrate poetry. The goal of National Poetry Month is to educate and raise appreciation for the art of poetry. The Academy of American Poets chose April to make poetry a more encouraged form of art.
In 2009, The Academy of American Poets started a project called the Free Verse Project. This project consists of a visual representation of free verse- tons of participants write their most memorable lines, from Poets such as TS Elliot, and William Carlos William. Fans wrote their verses on rocks with chalk, in sugar, in dust even. This ongoing project spilled onto Flickr, where you can view the entries.
In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s a few of our favorite poems:
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Sonnet XI by William Shakespeare
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endow’d, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carv’d thee for her
seal, and meant thereby,
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die