I live in a country founded by Puritans, immigrants, and pioneers. These groups hold in common practicality as a crucial value: the best work is useful work. In fact, this value took on mythic proportions over time, culminating in what is sometimes called the “Protestant work ethic.” But it is more than this. It is a mythos of practicality shared by many groups. Max Weber points out in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism that even in Japan, a nation that is not predominantly Protestant, the idea of working hard toward a practical, material end has become an intrinsic cultural value.

Faced with survival, individually and as a group, it only makes sense to channel one’s energy into material results. In Abraham Maslow’s model of hierarchic human needs, such groups function on the levels of physiology and safety, deriving their sense of love, belonging, and esteem from their contribution to the material needs of the group. In the case of many religions, morality and sense of higher purpose are also aligned with practical material work.

Poems are not edible, and one can not take shelter under a poem, unless we are speaking metaphorically. In Maslow’s model, poetry exclusively serves the need of self-actualization, which depends on other needs being met. Ironically, in a society that has struggled so long to build up each successive generation with greater capacity to fulfill the lower needs, self-actualizing behaviors often end up being seen as frivolous. We work so hard to maintain all the other cultural elements that ultimately enable self-actualizing behavior, and in focusing on the other needs so intently, often forget how to be creative, spontaneous, and solve problems of language and insight for the sheer pleasure of expressing the wondrous complexity of being human.

Poetry is the fool in King Lear’s court, pointing out where society has picked the wrong daughters to trust. We celebrate in Spring, when nature puts on its display of gratuitous beauty. Surely there are more practical ways to exchange pollen and ripen fruit. But the lilac and poppies and orange blossoms here in California are all saying: poetry, poetry, poetry.

Happy National Poetry Month, to all you hardworking “fools.”

• Health Awareness Month

• National Blood Donor Month
• National Oral Health Month

Notice a pattern? I do. National months are only declared for causes that socially-minded people think ought to receive more attention. That is to say, they are things we should pay more attention to–like our health, giving blood, recognizing the plight of others–good, noble causes that would simply get swept by the wayside were it not for (and sometimes still in spite of) assigning this cause to one of the twelve calendar months in an attempt to raise awareness.

In marketing there is the taxonomy of medicine, vitamins and candy. Any product is usually most like one of these three. Plumbing services to fix a broken pipe, for example, are medicine–fulfilling an immediate, expressed need. Cable Television is mostly candy–entertainment that looks and tastes good. A gym membership would be like vitamins. And poetry, unfortunately, by virtue of having been trotted out in classrooms on its national month once a year for the past eleven years, has proved itself to also be perceived most like vitamins–good for you, and you know it–but an awful lot harder to sell than medicine or candy.

There are, of course, some exceptions. In some instances, poetry is combined with dramatic performance and/or music to essentially sugar-coat the pill. Most vitamin companies bring out colorful, fun-shaped chewable vitamins for the same reason–because what is seen as candy is easier to sell. Still, while added dramatic and musical elements may create greater excitement in the moment, rarely do the texts of such poetic performances actually stand up on the page. And no matter how loudly the audience cheers, the content of such performances tend to be forgotten almost immediately after the show. Like candy, they are designed to excite–not nourish–and the bursts of energy they provide are often equally short lived.

After September 11th, 2001 a number of poetry compilations came out trying to offer words of comfort for troubling times. Publishers saw an opportunity to reposition poetry as medicine to the mainstream culture. The ripple, however, was slight. Increasingly, people seem to have replaced any genuine sense of the need for poetry with a sense that they ought to at least appreciate it (heaven forbid actually liking the stuff). Generally, those that do regard poetry as medicine have come to it their own way, and do not represent the majority.

The exception to the rule of an individual and minority relationship to poetry as need rather than should can be seen in the steady rise in MFA programs all over the country–a vote of confidence for reading and writing poetry that is being backed by cold, hard tuition money. And I doubt very much that students are enrolling in MFA programs because they feel, like taking vitamins, that they “ought” to get an arts degree. Getting an MBA is something you “ought” to do as a sensible career move. An MFA, to its students, is more likely either medicine or candy. I know which one it is for me.

So, maybe there is hope brewing yet that poetry can emerge from the vitamin shelf and figure more prominently in people’s lives. Mark Twain called a classic, “A book which people praise and don’t read.” Poetry has too long been an entire genre of writing which people likewise respect but rarely read. Given how much poetry matters to the health of human culture, here’s hoping for a time when every month can be poetry month and poems are generally regarded as more palatable than swallowing a large, jagged pill.