It’s National Poetry Month and there has been a question lingering in my head the past weeks: why is poetry important? And why specifically is it so important to me, a poet? One would think this is an easy answered question. I am a poet after all, thus suggesting that poetry is important to me at least partially because it’s what I do. Could I tell you why I started writing poetry? No, I began writing one day years ago and it stuck. It’s not possible for me to tell you the first poems I ever read either, though I can tell you my favorite poet and poem. Though these don’t explain why poetry is important today or any day. I found my answer while perusing the bookshelves of Strand Bookstore’s poetry section when I stumbled across a collection of poems that hit close to home and realized why poetry is important.

The book, you ask? Sloan-Kettering by Abba Kovner. In truth and in ignorance, I have never heard of Abba Kovner before finding this book. The book was sitting there on a shelf like fate left it there waiting for me, an unknown poet and patient at Sloan-Kettering, to find it. I picked up the book and felt like I was hugging an old friend; someone that understood how I’ve been feeling the past ten months. A friend that was able to see what I wanted to do, what I needed to do. He was telling me that it’s OK to take this trauma and use it to create something of beauty. I started reading it as soon as I got on the train and wasn’t able to put it down. It answered my…