Editor’s note: As we complete National Poetry Month, we offer our annual poetry column from retired teacher, author and poet Jan Bosman.

Poetry is given special emphasis in April every year. That is the month when poetry readers, writers and performers celebrate National Poetry Month, currently the largest worldwide literary celebration. It was initiated in April 1996 by the Academy of American Poets and involves millions of readers, students, teachers, librarians, and booksellers in the U.S., Canada and beyond, promoting poetry’s role in culture.

Over the past 12 years, I have highlighted National Poetry Month with articles about war poetry, inaugural poets, humorous poets and protest poets to mention a few. This year I want you to consider censorship with me as it has applied to poetry.

Like songs, movies, and books, creating and consuming poetry is protected free speech under the First Amendment. That means the government cannot punish you for what you say or write in a poem. Schools, stores, and public libraries cannot prohibit materials based on a complaint, but they are allowed to take some restrictive measures.

Curtailing the written word lies heavily on my mind; however, and censoring the work of poets is not a new phenomenon. According to Freedom Forum, several of Roman poet Ovid’s works from 3 C.E. were banned during his life and for centuries following his death. In 8 A.D., Caesar Augustus banished Ovid to Tomis on the Black Sea where he spent his final nine years and died. His works such as Amores and Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) were probably considered too erotic and inappropriate because they deal with love, sex, and adultery and include advice on those topics. Religious censors in Italy and England burned translated copies in the 15th and 16th centuries. Hundreds of years later and thousands of miles away, U.S customs officials banned imports of this work in 1930.

Only about 12% of Americans read or listen to poetry (18- to 24-year-olds lead the pack), so you could argue that not many readers care about poetry, banned or otherwise.

However, here are a few other poets through the years whose writings have been challenged as well. Maybe you will recognize them.

Works by William Shakespeare, although taught regularly in English classes across the U.S. and globe, have been banned or challenged based on sex, profane language, suicide, Antisemitism (“The Merchant of Venice”) and other controversial topics. In 1996, a New Hampshire school banned “Twelfth Night” because it involved a woman disguising herself as a man to attract another woman.

According to the article “Prohibited Poetry: 13 Poems That Faced Banning Attempts,” “A Light in the Attic” by Shel Silverstein, published in 1981, became one of the most banned books of the 1990s in schools because it allegedly “encouraged children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” The key phrase in this poem is, “If you have to dry the dishes /And you drop one on the floor / Maybe they won’t let you / Dry the dishes anymore.”

Despite the banning attempt, that book was among the most popular books of its time, staying on the bestseller list for 182 weeks.

Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool” has been misunderstood and banned because of the word “jazz.” Some people believed the line, “Jazz June” was sexual innuendo. Read this 8-line poem and decide what you think.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

Here’s what Brooks, who died in 2000, said about the content of her poem:

“A space can be permitted for a sexual interpretation. Talking about different interpretations gives me a chance to say something I firmly believe – that poetry is for personal use. When you read a poem, you may not get out of it all that the poet put into it, but you are different from the poet. You’re different from everybody else who is going to read the poem, so you should take from it what you need. Use it personally.”

Most recently, 2021 inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, whose poem “The Hill We Climb” attracted widespread acclaim with poetry devotees, had her poem challenged. The parent alleged that the poem was “not educational” and had “indirect hate messages.” The poem was not banned but restricted and moved to a library section for older middle school students. Gorman expressed profound disappointment, describing the restriction as a “gut punch.” The incident occurred in May 2023 at a Miami-Dade County school after a single parent complaint, which mistakenly cited Oprah Winfrey as the author of the poem.

I questioned several bookstore owners and workers if they had ever been asked to remove a poetry book from their shelves because of inappropriate content. The concise answer was “No.” However, bookstore workers at Barnes and Noble in Algonquin said that during Banned Book Month, customers sometimes surreptitiously turn displayed banned books face down on tables. At Read Between the Lynes in Woodstock, an employee said that banned books sometimes find themselves accompanied by a religious book that a customer has placed next to it.

I care about the sacredness of words. I care deeply about freedom of expression, whether that means on television or in newspapers or books. For readers, I just hope you read a poem this April that you like or can relate to. Or listen to one on dedicated websites like the Poetry Foundation or Poets.org, which offer free audio archives and daily poems. If one poem doesn’t speak to you, try another. Maybe next year, I will be able to report that poetry readership has increased to 13% and you are included. Wouldn’t that be a celebration!

• Jan Bosman of Woodstock taught English and business for 32 years, the last 22 at Johnsburg High School. She also is a published essayist and poet and a member of the Atrocious Poets of McHenry County and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.