Sunday, April 1, marked the start of National Poetry Month, an annual celebration the Academy of American Poets first introduced in 1996, according to poets.org. To commemorate National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world, the King Street Chronicle will publish one poem each school day throughout April.

Ars Poetica 3
by Amanda Earl
A poem, not all poems, but some poems, or maybe just this
poem is uncertain, it falters. A poem crawls on its belly out
of shadow, but avoids full-on sunshine. A poem is made
from ashes, nightmare, solitude, erasure, the unknown. It
names itself or it doesn’t. A poem cannot fully articulate or
understand the pattern of synapses made by the brain. A
poem is a long sentence or a line or a group of lines or a
school of images, a fish that swims through uncertain
waters. A poem overflows with metaphor or doesn’t. You
can write a poem. You’re allowed to write a poem because
you are. There is no reason. A poem is something in your
own voice. You don’t even have to call it a poem. It
belongs to Poetry or it doesn’t. A poem is concrete or it
isn’t. It uses abstraction or plays with cliché or doesn’t. It
negotiates white space on a page and navigates the air. It is
a linguistic gymnast or it’s clumsy, it stumbles, it is a blind
fumbler in a sky empty of stars. A poem is a way to
communicate with others in a language that comes from a
deep place inside you. A poem is made of words that are
mined like precious stones or unearthed like buried
treasure. A poem is pain gently exposed to the dawn, it
paints the sky red. It is brave of you to write a poem. To
share it with others. Somewhere someone is reading your
poem right now and understands just how you feel.
 
– Mae Harkins, Staff Writer
Featured image by Mae Harkins ’20