Poetry For Breakfast
Eat is for eat, drink is for drink, Dr. Zhou says. She has helped a lot of people use Chinese medicine and common sense to get over IBS and a host of other ailments. I know she is right about eat eat, drink drink. One thing at a time. There are so many things that we THINK have to go together but they do not, such as bad luck and disappointment.
So yes. I’m trying to eat more slowly. More focus on chewing. But I can’t imagine breakfast without poetry.
And last week, four people asked me for suggestions of poetry to read (and there’s the Good Reads invitations—I’m sure Good Reads is fabulous but right now taking on another Web Thing feels akin to adopting a new puppy. I can’t set up any more accounts, record any more passwords, I just can’t right now. I know Good Reads is good. It’s like fiber. I’m scared of its thickness, the bulk.)
And, I found myself prescribing (I am certified to perform this procedure) poetry to three more people: first Bee, whose cough lingers, who is writing songs again. Then Marlena, my Bulgarian friend in
(Then a basket of student emails—what can we read over break? Good students! I hope I replied. If not, here we go.)
A poem a day is good, but all the poem-a-day books I have (except for Billy Collins Poetry 180 series) are too bent on Representing Poetry so you have to pick through all the boring Necessary Inclusions to find the good poems. I say just read wonderful poems.
If you just want to read poetry, and not study it, you want to choose poems who stand on their own beautifully. (Poetry Daily is good.) This doesn’t mean they’re easy poems, it just means that you can read them with your cereal and tea and not start the day frustrated, pretentious, idiotic, or stuffed. Good poetry meets you half way.
Poetry is like photography. Diane Arbus says: a photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.
(I’m always in the mood for that type of experience.)
Like a tuning fork, a good poem sets the tone for the day.
Poetry for Breakfast
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Gary Soto
Poetry for Marlena
Tomas Transtromer
Sharon Olds
Elizabeth Bishop
Poetry for Musicians
Rumi
Naomi Nye
Richard Brautigan
James Tate
Pablo Neruda Love Sonnets
David Tucker Late for Work
Jim Carroll
Poetry for Former Fiction Students
Marie Howe
Tony Hoagland
Van Jordan
When you ask a poet for suggestions on who to read she will give you a different list on any given day. (Ally, tell me who are you reading, who’s good?)
3 Comments so far
Leave a reply
It might also be useful to offer some contraindications…musty Irish poetry when you have a cough, Charles Bukowski when you’re a young man without a girlfriend, Eliot’s cat book when you have taste, etc.
And for yoga: Jane Hirshfield!
I read your post all the way till the part Poetry for Milena, saw the first suggestion, got so excited, left your post, googled the name, got to poets.org, and there it was -the first poem by Tomas Transtromer that caught my eye was After a Death. Exactly 12 lines long, 4 of which I understood straight away. The rest will need some thinking.
I am back now to read the rest of your post and thank you for your suggestions.
And I wonder- how did you decide which poets to recomend to which person?
If I was to recomend good cello music for different people to listen to,I would give Bach to the intelectual, Cassado to the flamboyant,Shostakovitch to the lover of rock music, the Hyden concertos to the fans of Earl Grey tea with milk and Frank sonata to the dreamers.
And I wanted to tell you that my long time good friend and mentor Vivien Mackie, a great cellist and an Alexander Technique teacher has written a deeply moving and sincere book about her time studying with Pablo Casals in Prades. The book´s title is `Just Play Naturally` and I think you would find it amazing on many levels.