"It appears that it's National Poetry Month again, and I would be a poor servant of poetry (SOP) indeed, if I did not do my own small part in extolling the virtue and nobility or this ancient and noble art! So, in defense of poetry and of poets:
-Poetry is more efficient than fiction. Why read 500 pages of fiction (Freedom by Jonathan Franzen for example) that belabors a point that a really good poem can make more memorably in one or two pages.
-Poetry is more complex, more difficult than fiction. It is more comprehensively moving than fiction. As an art of sound and rhetoric, it involves you totally.
-Poetry is for adults.
-Poetry doesn't sell. Pardon me, but the bestsellers list doesn't exactly speak to the superiority of fiction! Fiction, when it's not so painfully earnest, is downright silly! That poetry doesn't sell is no - I repeat, no - point of shame to poets or poetry!
-The world of poetry is small and intimate. If reading fiction is like being in a sports stadium, reading poetry is like being in a mid-sized conference room. You can mill around and soon meet everybody.
Let's see... that's about it, I think. Thank you for the chance to discharge of my duty as a SOP, because truly we need a National Poetry Month (as we need a Feline Cancer Awareness Month or a Recycle Your Beer Bottles Month). Pace Frank O'Hara, who said that let the children eat candy, he doesn't give a yam whether people read poetry or not - poetry does continually require institutional promotion and support.
Oh yeah, this book - it's terrible!"
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