Why I Love Reading Poetry Part 1
I recount in three posts how I started reading poetry for funsies and haven't stopped since.
Friend and I were having a conversation today (really back in 2008) in which she admitted that a Haruki Murakami book is her idea of literary foreplay.
Wait, what?
Let me enlighten you.
Said friend and I sat around a fondue pot, waxing literarily about David Sedaris books and how I should read more David Sedaris books when said friend said that she hadn't read in awhile, which meant she needed to read a Murakami book.
I said, "Wait, what?"
And she said, in a way that was most enlightening, that Murakami books just get her excited about reading. They're like the spark that sets off the TNT. Once she reads a Murakami book, she finds herself running downhill and gaining momentum, devouring books in her path--there are no survivors after that one--until she runs out of steam.
I was a bit jealous. Sure, I go through reading ups and downs, but I don't have a guaranteed formula to get me reading again. Instead, my reading phases depend on the whimsy of my fancy. This year, I read and reread all the Jane Austen books within a three month period because of the Masterpiece Theater teledramas. Then I hit some non-fiction with a vengeance because of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter. And now? Well, see ….
Poetry.
I am reading poetry like crazy.
Generally, I don't read poetry. Instead, I tend to read it like I listen to music in that I go to a poetry reading, hear a poem, am directed to a poet, then I hear something I like, buy a book if I want, read a few poems in no particular order, shelve the book, forget about it, and then like a CD I find it again a few years later and love it all over again.
Not so here. I have been buying poetry books, sitting down with them immediately and reading them straight through from page 1 to page whatever.
It's shocking to me, too.
I wonder if it's a matter of time in that I only have so much time to read and poetry is a very condensed story. And yet, at the same time, I think poetry is something that's meant to be read and enjoyed over time. You can't just read a poem. You read it. Think about it. Forget it. Remember it. And love it again.
Stranger and strangier don't you think?
So whom are these poets that have bewitched me? Let's go numerical with a 1! 2! 3!
1) The Niagara River by Kay Ryan, current Poet Laureate of the US. I uncovered this volume while at Chicago O'Hare airport. I needed a book. I recognized her name and thought that I'd give it a whirl. As I said earlier, I didn't put the book down till I had read every single delicious word. And this was a poetry book, too, in which I had to pop up every now and then, bother my traveling companions and share some deliciousness with them. And what was even better was that they loved every morsel as much as I did.
One thing that I noticed about Ryan's poems was that they were compact little narratives like Aesop's fables. There were "No Moral of the Story"s but there were lessons to be had. I give you this example:
"Pitcher" A pitcher molds the air in it, dividing from the air beyond the air it holds. And should the pitcher vanish, something would take a minute to escape, a gradually diminishing integrity, a thinning pitcherful of pitcher shape.
Note how neatly built this poem is. Despite the simplicity of the language, there's a mature internal rhyme scheme and structure. It just made me "squee!" in delight! I laughed at funny parts while reading this on the plane. I "awwed." I was touched. I felt the same sentiment as the girl in Simon Romero's NYTimes article on the Biblioburro, thinking: "Oh this is beautiful Maestro. And when will such an experience come back?"
Next week: Odes to common things and Pablo Neruda
—Originally written by Sarah Dzida (October 2008)
Author’s Note: A few days ago this year (2022), I meandered into a Barnes and Noble and wandered out carrying way more books than I intended to buy; the original number was supposed to be zero. One was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and I’m just having so much fun reading it that I recalled these three poetry-reading anecdotes to share with you all.