Since April is National Poetry Month (in the USA), I wanted to do something special in this issue of Verse-Virtual.  I came up with two ideas. 


My first idea was to invite the state Poets Laureate to contribute.  I did so and now I'm honored to present poems by:

• Dick Allen, Poet Laureate of Connecticut
  
• Kimberly Blaeser, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin
• Juan Felipe Herrera, former Poet Laureate of California
• Joseph Hutchison, Poet Laureate of Colorado
  
• Sydney Lea, Poet Laureate of Vermont
• Wesley McNair, Poet Laureate of Maine
• Sheryl Noethe , former Poet Laureate of Montana
• Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas
• William Trowbridge, Poet Laureate of Missouri



(You will find their poems in the CURRENT POETRY section.)  


My second idea was to invite all April contributors to send me a one-sentence definition of poetry that starts with "Poetry is..."   I did that, too, and here are the many wonderful replies I received:


Poetry is the closest words can come to expressing that which cannot be articulated.  
                                                                                                                  —  C.A. Allen


Poetry is walking (while sometimes singing)—with footsteps of many different measures and colors and intensities--though doorways going inward into numerous small or large houses or going outward down rows of apple trees leading toward a most mysterious and Zen Beyond…or at least that’s just a single definition out of a myriad of possible ones. 
                                                                                     —  Dick Allen


Poetry (like other arts) is an act of attention: it first asks us to look closely at what we encounter in our world, and then to look through or beyond it—to see or understand it not in its static “thingness,” but in its vitality, in relationship.​  
                                                      —  Kimberly Blaeser


Poetry is a rhyme, sometime, unless it be free, you see.  
                                                                      —  Larry Bradfield


Poetry is telling the truth about what you see in the world.  
                                                                           —  Marc Carver  


Poetry is mined from far-ranging synapses; a scattering of sparks flying through fingertips. 
                                                                                                            — Sylvia Cavanaugh


Poetry is as necessary as air or water. 
                                    —  Barbara Crooker


Poetry is what remains after all the false words have been eliminated.  
                                                                                      —  Charles Fishman


Poetry is an invitation to see the world through someone else's eyes.  
                                                                                        —  Wendy Freborg


Poetry is a way to express what I usually do not express in polite conversations with strangers.                                                                                                              — Nancy Gauquier

             
Poetry is the long walk home.  
                           —  David M. Graham


Poetry is a path of deep knowing, a breathing in and giving back as we try to translate the world, and writing it can reveal to us what we are feeling and thinking before we consciously know.  
                                                                                                                  —  Penny Harter 


Poetry is an infinite loop of cosmic cookies.  
                                                —  Juan Felipe Herrera


Poetry is painful and pleasant at the same time.  
                                                  —  Trish Hopkinson


Poetry is a blue vase of daffodils, a dozen suns filling me with light.  
                                                                                     —  Karla Huston


Poetry is an affirmation of my soul — sometimes. 
                                                            —  James Keane


Poetry is the particle that is also a wave, the one that bursts into flame on the 
screen of your mind.  
                   —  Steve Klepetar 


Poetry is the words that come when they have to come and can't be stopped even if you try to,
but you don't.  
             —  Robert Knox


Poetry is what comes out of all the mayhem, that there are no words for...yet 
we find them.  
          —  Stuart Kurtz  



Poetry is the literary record of visionary experience.
                                                                   — W.F. Lantry


Poetry is a unit of language so called by its author, and can range from conventional forms to
prose poems and include anything in between.  
                                                            —  Sydney Lea


Poetry is water fresh from the well, sustaining us.  
                                                               —  Tom Montag


Poetry is necessary words. 
                          —  Harvey O'Leary


Poetry is the beautiful garden path to expanded consciousness.  
                                                                             —  Benjamin Pehr


Poetry is darkness and light and sometimes they don’t get along and sometimes they 
fall in love.  
          —  Kenneth Pobo


Poetry is a continuation of politics by other means.  
                                                            —  Frederick Pollack


Poetry is language working at its best in service of what it cannot tell. 
                                                                                        —  Lex Runciman


Poetry is seeing behind things, to look at things in many ways and create an 
emotional overlay.  
                 —  Domenic J. Scopa 


Poetry is pure oxygen for gasping souls; an oasis in a desert. 
                                                                          —  Sunil Sharma


Poetry is where language and music meet to make a new experience. 
                                                                                  — Joannie Stangeland


Poetry is one way the creative process emanates through us, as we are moved to name what we see in the world.  
                — Donna Baier Stein


Poetry is both basement and tornado. 
                                           — Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas 


Poetry is to language as music is to sound.  
                                                --  Ed Westein


Poetry is non-biodegradable language.  
                                              —  Robert Wexelblatt


Poetry is the large pot of Welsh daffodils I smoked yesturdudy.  
                                                                                —  Tim Williams