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This week, the Library of Congress announced that Natasha Trethewey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Native Guard, will be the next poet laureate of the United States. Trethewey, a native of Mississippi, is the first Southern poet laureate since 1986.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky says he's tired of people thinking of poetry as bad-tasting medicine they have to swallow just because it's healthy. His anthology of 80 poems by master poets is designed to help us see poetry as an art "rather than a challenge to say smart things."

In this installment of our Weekend Reads series, author Meg Medina selects Skila Brown's novel in poems Caminar, which follows a young boy who survives the slaughter of his village in Guatemala.

Now almost 40 years old, rap burst out of the Bronx to become one of the dominant musical and cultural forces in this country. A new book, called The Anthology of Rap, tracks the development of the genre from New York house parties to Eminem and Jay-Z.

It embodies the belief that anyone can take the stage and interpret one of the most accessible art forms and "reveal poetry as a living art."

Looks like this year, April showers brought April flowers. As in, a bouquet of outstanding poets. So stop and smell the roses, my friends.

Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. NPR met with Herrera on World Poetry Day, March 21, 2017, to talk about the role of poetry in society.

Our resident political poets, Calvin Trillin and James Bowman, offer their take on the third and final presidential debate. Trillin is the author of Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme. Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

Many of Marilyn Nelson's most famous poetry collections are for children. Her latest work, How I Discovered Poetry, is a memoir about her own childhood, which was spent traveling around the country in the 1950s as the daughter of an Air Force pilot.

Listeners are invited to submit short poems on Twitter to celebrate National Poetry Month. Curator and poet Holly Bass gives an update on recent tweets about tragedy in Boston, and other topics.