If I listed each of my books one book at a time, this could go on for several years. So today I'm starting with a pile of poetry books from my house (another one from my office will show up later). A near perfect day off for me is going to my favorite book store, buying a book of poetry then reading it at the coffee shop down the street. For me, poetry points to all the stuff that you sense but can't ever quite get your finger on - in other words...mystery. Life without mystery would seem to me to be incredibly flat and boring. I don't claim to be able to understand poems any better than anyone else and therefore I like the comment poet Billy Collins once said about desiring to tie some poems up to a chair and torturing the meaning out of them.
I'll include one from Jane Hirshfield's collection of poems called, "After. This one is called, "Vilnius."
For a long time / I keep the guidebooks out on the table. / In the morning, drinking coffee, I see the spines: / St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Vienna. / Choices pondered but not finally taken. / Behind them - sometimes behind thick fog - the mountain. / If you lived higher up on the mountain, / I find myself thinking, what you would see is / more of everything else, but not the mountain.
Go read some poetry today.
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