As we wind down to the final days of National Poetry Month, I’m still shouting from the rooftops and blasting your mailbox and screen with poem confetti. You know, of course, that April, not Christmas, is the most wonderful time of the year (less shopping, more reading).
Years ago when a local librarian was celebrating National Poetry Month she asked what books had shaped my writing life (isn’t that great, celebrating poetry as a job? I’m both grateful and jealous). The other day I found my list and was happy to see the choices still hold. Like a good black dress and thank you notes, the classics keep their value.
Today, in encouragement of poem reading, writing & appreciating, let’s revisit (with a few updates):
Books That Shaped My Poetry Life
1.
Complete Poems by e.e. cummings
This lower-case poet showed me what language could do, what a poem could be.
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
2.
The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich
With a close command of language and line, Rich masterfully unspools story, feeling, fact.
A conversation begins
with a lie. And each
speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart
3.
Live or Die by Anne Sexton
Through Sexton I realized sadness can be full of velocity and ferocity.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
The never ask why build.
4.
What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
This book made me realize that a poem could be funny, witty, sarcastic, sad, tell a story, and all at once!
The sparrows are a kind of people
Who lost a war a thousand years ago;
As punishment all their color was taken away.
5.
The Way It Is by William Stafford
A poet of the everyday and a model of productivity, Stafford wrote over 50 books — and his first was not published until age 46!
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
6.
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Carson lifts lines from Keats and blends them with her own poem-prose mix. Is it a very long poem, or a short story? She calls it “a fictional essay.” I call it brilliant.
A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it.
7.
The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda
Yes, poems can be silly, surreal, and stirring.
And what is the name of the month
that falls between December and January?
Why didn’t they give us longer
months that last all year?
Books That Are Not Poetry But Are Poetic:
8.
Dear Diego by Elena Poniatowska
A delicate story of art and unrequited love, told through letters.
9.
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
An intimate diary of a year in the life of a creative woman
And it occurs to me that there is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much. It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end the day in depression. Not easy to find the balance, for if one does not have wild dreams of achievement there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
10.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Tight, lyrical prose turns this intimate story about sexual awakening into a poetic, searing novel.
Very early in my life it was too late.
11.
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Humor, heart, wit — Lamott has all the essentials.
Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.
12.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual, line after beautiful line.
In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? I miss you more than I remember you.
My Favorite Writing Resource Books:
13.
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
It’s 30 years since I first read this gem and it is the foundation of everything I write.
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
14.
poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge
Beyond prompts, this book offers enthusiasm that moves me to write.
Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.
15.
The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
Great ideas packed in this gem, reminding us that every day offers writing inspiration.
Only 15? Yes, okay, my private list is longer but I don’t want to test your patience. I want you to read — and write!
What’s on your list?
