Poetry A Protected Class?
April, the cruelest month, is the month we celebrate Poetry. I should state up front that I'm not really big on "months" outside of their general usefulness to demarcate seasons and to provide convenient dates for receipt of that pittance I call a paycheck. I find the use of a month to "celebrate" something to be generally useless and offensive.
When you are given a month to celebrate yourself, it generally means that you are considered by some not worthy of celebration. A month is a short amount of time, after all, for the public to be mildly reminded of your presence. Homage can be paid by the faithful, who know you're around anyway, and the rest of the world can just ignore you. As a black female who likes to teach poetry, I'm just not interested in the months of February, March, and April as anything other than the time when I have to dress in carefully chosen layers so as not to find myself freezing/sweating/drenched at day's end.