Brenda's Book Bash

My best laid plans included dedicating April to some new(ish) and noteworthy collections of poetry in honor of National Poetry Month, but, in the words of the great spring poet, Wordsworth, “the world is too much with us,” and the stack of ungraded papers that I carry home each night is now heavy enough to trigger the seat belt light on my dashboard.

As I tell my students when I enter the classroom empty handed, their papers still stuffed in the bag I tote up and down the hill from the parking lot to my office every day, “I promise I’ll have them next time.”

My suggestion to the people who decide on national months for this and that might want to rethink the April thing. In these endangered times for the genre, is it really fair to make it compete with the opening of baseball season and the NBA playoffs? Then there’s spring cleaning, that great war on dust bunnies, and gardening and, of course, grading, grading, grading.

Nevertheless, the Brenda’s Book Bash poetry party will start now and continue until I have polished off the stack of books next to my computer, even if that takes us into May. Next up will be an omnibus review of some great new short story collections, and then my suggestions for summer reading in Brenda’s Beach Bag. Whew.

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