Read something that inspires you
Poetry celebrates the landmarks of our lives. We mark our births and birthdays, our marriages and rites of passage, and our dying with the words of the poets. We find, as Sigmund Freud once commented so notably, that “everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.”
And yet, for almost all of us, poetry is not a part of our daily lives. If we do not actually hate poetry, we harbour a veiled dislike of it, grudgingly accepting it at times of celebration and grief. We do not reach for poetry as an everyday part of our pleasure reading. Daunted by the challenges of much classic and contemporary poetry, we turn off: It is too difficult, too opaque, too utterly incomprehensible. Rather than experience a demanding poem, we find ourselves without the resources to enjoy and comprehend what we have opened ourselves to and we turn away in baffled confusion. Our frustration is a measure of our disappointment and an emerging sense we have that all this is not for us, the everyday people, but for the initiated.
There is truth in the idea that poetry requires some work and learned skills in its enjoyment. But acquiring the necessary skills and doing the work can be a pleasure when we have available good resources to help us. April is Poetry Month, and the library has a good selection of accessible, inviting guides about how to read poems and make them part of our lives. Four titles that stand out particularly are: “How to Read a Poem…and Start a Poetry Circle” by Molly Peacock; “A Grain of Poetry: How to Read Contemporary Poems and Make Them a Part of Your Life” by Herbert Kohl; “How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry” by Edward Hirsch and “Catching Life by the Throat: How to Read Poetry and Why: Poems from Eight Great Poets” by Josephine Hart. A wonderful celebration of poets and poetry can be found in: “The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets” by Bill Moyers.
The library has a broad and deep collection of poetry to delve into, ranging from the classics to the contemporary. Having explored one of these valuable guidebooks, the whole poetry collection could come alive for you. Perhaps you will find yourself eager to add your own voice to the conversation and you may turn to one of the many poetry writing guides, such as “A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry” by Mary Oliver.
Who knows where the muse will lead you?