World Poetry Day

UNESCO declared March 21 to be World Poetry Day back in 1999, and who am I to argue with the United Nations? It’s a day meant to promote the writing, reading, reciting, teaching, and preservation of poetry, so go generate or consume some lovely words today. I’m one of those uncouth souls who think poetry ought to actually rhyme, or at least have some meaningful rhythm. (I know, so gauche, right?) That prejudice aside, here’s a pro tip: taking an ordinary prose sentence and adding arbitrary line breaks and indentation doesn’t make it poetry, even though a lot of what’s sold as poetry is precisely that. You have to put some work into those words, people. At least give it a solid effort today.

Image credit: Florence Earle Coates [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons