Why not the whole year?

In the 1990s I worked on a collaboration with Ukrainian poet Boris Khersonsky to produce an English translation of his poem cycle Family Archive. During an editing session in the Little Odessa neighborhood of Brooklyn, I was bemoaning the low regard for poetry in the US, saying that he was fortunate to live in a society that took poetry seriously enough to persecute its practitioners. As an actual victim of that persecution during the samizdat days of the Soviet Union, he naturally had a different view of the matter, but said he took my meaning. So we take what honor we can--in this case our own month, April, National Poetry Month. Last week after David Budbill's reading in Montgomery Vermont, I asked him, "Where is the poem sweetest?--in the mind, as it is composed--or on the page, in final shape--or on the tongue, as it is performed?" "As performed," he replied, with no hesitation. So tune in tonight for poetry at its sweetest on Readers and Writers at 7 pm. Archive audio.