Ring the bells and sound the alarms, it’s World Environment Day, today, right now!   Unless you’re in Australia, and it was yesterday, and you missed it.   Anyhow, to mark this extremely extreme occasion, I have penned some limericks.   Enjoy.

There once was a man named Gene
Who had an idea so keen
“I just have to say
We should have a whole day
Dedicated to making Earth green!”

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It’s National Poetry Month. Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.

What I like about poetry is the vast definition of what makes a collection of words poetic. I like how poetry is found in the silliness of Shel Silverstein, in the deeply moving Maya Angelou, and in the innovative and lyrical Saul Williams (see the clip below). All of these artists take feelings and thoughts that seem unexplainable and translate them into something beautiful.

Poets.org has a great list of the top 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month, here are my favorite 5 from their list.

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The Oscars are a hop, skip and a jump away (a week and a half!) so I thought it might be nice to look at the 4th nominee for Best Documentary, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (directed by Richard Robbins). The movie takes firsthand accounts from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families and turns them into a movie. Their experiences are told to us in interviews and dramatic readings that are accompanied by real footage, photos and animations, to paint a portrait of what it is really like to be in the war.

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