American poet Allen Ginsberg.
Credit: Public Domain (Dutch National Archives)

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness….”

So begins the epic poem Howl by the American poet Allen Ginsberg. In the poem, Ginsberg rails at length against dehumanizing forces in modern society. He also laments their effect on the people in his life.

Howl, first read publicly in October 1955, shocked audiences with its graphic descriptions of violence, mental illness, sexuality, and drug abuse. The poem’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was even charged with obscenity. However, Howl came to be seen as a revolutionary work of great indignation and humanity, and Ginsberg has come to be honored among the greatest modern poets.

Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. He became known as a leader of the beat literary movement of the 1950′s and also of the cultural and political protests of the 1960′s. Critics have praised him as a prophetic poet in the tradition of William Blake of England and Walt Whitman of the United States.

Ginsberg’s writing combines the spiritual and rhythmic qualities of certain Eastern and Western religious texts with the language, imagery, and subject matter of modern life. Many critics see him as representing a struggle for spiritual survival in a dehumanized, repressive society.

The death of Ginsberg’s mother in 1956 inspired his famous elegy “Kaddish” (1961). His other works include Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1972), and Mind Breaths (1978). Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997. His Collected Poems 1947-1997 was published in 2006. Wait Till I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems was published in 2016.

Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo
Credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

National Poetry Month promotes the appreciation and awareness of poetry. So, too, does Joy Harjo, the poet laureate of the United States. The poet laureate is the official poet of a state or nation. Harjo is a writer, a musician, and a member of the Muskogee (also spelled Muscogee or Mvskoke) Creek Nation. In 2019, she became the first Native American chosen to be poet laureate of the United States.

Harjo was born Joy Foster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951. Her father was Muskogee Creek, and her mother was of Cherokee and European ancestry. At age 19, Joy became a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation and took the last name of her father’s mother—Harjo—a common last name among the Muskogee. Harjo earned a B.A. degree in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. She has since taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and at universities in several states.

In 1975, Harjo published her first collection of poems in a short book called The Last Song. Her first full-length volume of poetry was What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979). Her poetry became well known with such collections as She Had Some Horses (1983), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). Her forceful, intimate style draws on both natural and spiritual influences. Her poems often incorporate elements of Native American mythology and imagery. Harjo’s later collections include A Map to the Next World (2000), How We Became Human (2002), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), and An American Sunrise (2019). She has won many awards for her work.

Harjo also wrote The Good Luck Cat (2000), a children’s picture book about a girl who worries about her lucky cat, who has used up eight of his nine lives. A poetic picture book for young adults called For a Girl Becoming (2009) celebrates the birth of a baby girl and the girl’s path to adulthood. Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave (2012), describes her own youth and her discovery of her creative voice.

Harjo has written screenplays for television and contributed, as a writer or narrator, to several documentaries on aspects of Native American culture. As an accomplished musician and saxophone player, she has released several recordings. She also is an activist for Native American and other causes.

American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Credit: © Robert Altman, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

San Francisco, California, is home to such famous landmarks as Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and City Lights bookstore. In 1953, the independent bookstore was founded by the American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) and his friend Peter Martin. The store became a gathering place for the Beat movement and other avant-garde (experimental) writers and artists of the 1950’s. The Beats were writers who disapproved of commercialism and middle-class American values. Ferlinghetti was best known as a leader of the Beat movement.

Ferlinghetti wrote in colloquial (conversational) free verse. Free verse is a style of poetry that does not follow traditional rules of poetry composition. His poetry describes the need to release literature and life from conformity and timidity. The grotesque and a feeling of intense excitement are combined in his work, especially in his most famous poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958). The collection is also a satiric criticism of American culture. Satire is the use of wit to attack human conduct or institutions.

Lawrence Monsanto Ferling was born on March 24, 1919, in Yonkers, New York. His father, an Italian immigrant, had shortened the family name, Ferlinghetti, after coming to the United States. As an adult, Lawrence learned about his father’s original name and eventually took it as his own. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II (1939-1945), he earned a master’s degree in literature from Columbia University in 1947 and a doctorate degree in literature from the Sorbonne in Paris, France, in 1950.

When he returned to the United States, Ferlinghetti settled in San Francisco, California. There, in 1953, he and Peter Martin established the City Lights bookstore. In 1955, Ferlinghetti started a publishing company, also called City Lights. He published his own first volume of poetry, Pictures of the Gone World (1955), as well as works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Rexroth, and others.

Ferlinghetti’s other collections of poetry include Endless Life: Selected Poems (1981); These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993); A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997); and How to Paint Sunlight: Lyric Poems and Others, 1997-2000 and San Francisco Poems (both 2001). His novels include Her (1960) and Love in the Days of Rage (1988). Poetry as Insurgent Art (2007) contains his writings on the nature of poetry. Writing Across the Landscape (2015) is a collection of travel journal entries written from 1960 to 2010. In 2019, Ferlinghetti published Little Boy, an autobiographical prose poem. He also published plays and composed oral messages—poems to be spoken to jazz accompaniment. Ferlinghetti died on Feb. 22, 2021.

Statue of the haiku poet Basho in Iwate, Japan
© beibaoke, Shutterstock

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

Haiku (pronounced hy koo) is a popular form of Japanese poetry. In Japanese, a haiku consists of 17 syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines. The first and third lines have 5 syllables, and the second line has 7 syllables. A haiku typically tries to create an impression or mood. Haiku themes are generally simple and deal with everyday situations and sensations. However, the poet tends to hint at them rather than treat them in a plain, direct manner.

According to Japanese tradition, each haiku must contain a kigo—that is, a word that indicates the season in which the poem is set. Some kigo are obvious, such as snow to indicate winter. Others are less obvious. For example, the word balloon can indicate spring.

Haiku originated in the 1600’s as the first three lines, called hokku, that served as the opening stanza of a longer poem. From the late 1600’s to the early 1800’s, the Japanese poets Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa composed classic hokku. Basho composed the following lines during the late 1600’s:

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

In 1892, the poet and journalist Masaoka Shiki published rules that established haiku as an independent form of poetry rather than a part of a longer work of verse.

You can try writing your own haiku! In many parts of the world, spring has arrived. You could write a haiku about the blossoming flowers in a park or the chirping birds outside your window. When you’re done, read your poem to your musical bird friends!

American poet Amanda Gorman
Credit: © Kathy Hutchins, Shutterstock

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet. 

On January 20, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. On the west front of the United States Capitol, musicians performed, religious leaders prayed, and a new president delivered an inaugural address. Among the many speakers was the American poet Amanda Gorman. A 22-year-old Black woman, Gorman became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration.

The poem, titled “The Hill We Climb,” was written for the occasion and referenced the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, just two weeks before the inauguration. In the attack, rioters supporting outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won. Gorman’s poem read in part:

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust.

For while we have our eyes on the future,

history has its eyes on us.

Many observers described Gorman’s performance as extremely moving, bringing the poem’s beautiful, powerful words to life. Her expressive voice guided listeners through the past, present, and future of the United States. The poem and her performance were met with much acclaim.

Gorman was born in 1998 in Los Angeles, California. She struggled with a speech impediment as a child. Gorman studied at Harvard University. She had her first published collection of poetry with The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (2015). Her work includes themes of feminism and racial oppression. In 2017, she was named the first U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate by the youth writing program Urban Word NYC in cooperation with the Library of Congress.

Gorman became one of only a few poets to perform at a presidential inauguration, joining such legends as Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. In 1993, Angelou performed the poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Frost recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

Credit: © metamorworks, Shutterstock

April 1 marks the first day of National Poetry Month in the United States, a celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

Throughout history, poetry has been used for many purposes. People have used poetry in religious rituals, to praise and celebrate remarkable individuals, and to express intense emotions, from love to rage. Various social groups have also used poetry to record events and stories. Such poems include lessons that are important for the group to remember and pass down from generation to generation.

The basic feature of poetic language is rhythm. Rhythm is the repetition of sounds in a particular pattern. All human beings enjoy rhythm. Children may clap their hands or rock their bodies to match the rhythm of nursery rhymes, with the rhythm helping the words stick in their memory. Adults may detect more subtle patterns in poems and find that such patterns deepen their response to the meanings and emotions conveyed by the words.

Poetry began in prehistoric times, as an oral (spoken) tradition. After the development of writing, poetry gradually became an important written art. In all languages throughout history, human beings have created poems, remembered them, recited them, and found deep meaning in them. There are times in life when every human being wants to say exactly the right thing in exactly the right words. That is what poets try to do. For people who do not write poetry, it can be a moving discovery to find a poem that expresses feelings or experiences for which they cannot find the words.

Poetry has come to seem strange to many people. Yet, we still discover poetry in many places in our world. Popular songs feature such poetic innovations as regular meter and rhyme. Nursery rhymes and children’s verse remain popular. At important events in life—a wedding or a funeral, for example—people may recite poetry to express their feelings and to mark the significance of the event.

People still turn to poetry to express romantic feelings, whether reciting well-known poems or writing their own. Poems remain not only among the most enjoyable uses of language but the most precise and significant as well. In some cultures, poetry remains highly valued, and many people have memorized numbers of poems.

Not every poem is well-written or memorable. But among the countless poems that have been written throughout the ages, every individual will find at least some that strike a deep and resonant chord.