How to add more poetry to your life
A few easy, accessible ways to trick yourself into reading poetry
It’s harder to lose yourself in a poem. In a plot heavy book, you can escape, forget the virus and the recession and the constant whine of sirens hopefully heading somewhere far away. In a non-fiction, there’s momentum of story too (at least in good non-fiction). But poetry feels less comprehensive, less all encompassing. It feels almost too easy to put down. At any other time, this would be a knock against poetry. I love to fall into a book, and it’s harder with a book of poems. Though I did find one that absolutely absorbed me.
Now, though, when you’re already easily distracted, when you cannot stop yourself from picking up your phone at all moments of the day, is a great time to inject some poetry into your life to surprise yourself with. I am sure there are infinite other ways to add poetry to your life, but here are five that I use that I really really like.
Pome, a newsletter by Matthew Ogle
Every single day, Matthew sends a poem to your inbox. Usually they are short, almost always they are modern. If you liked the poem last week about GoodTime Jesus, that is a poem that I found from Pome last week! Sometimes, I don’t like the poems, but the exposure to new and various poetry every day not only opens my mind a little more, it takes up space in my inbox. It’s easy to read a poem you already have.
PoetryFoundation.org
There is SO MUCH poetry in the world, and like Pome, the Poetry Foundation has done a good job of trying to make poems accessible. In the side bar of their home page they always have a poem of the day, which are often older and more famous than Pome poems. Today’s, for example, is this Edward Thomas poem that I really enjoyed.
Pocket Poetry
This is an app! Like the other too recommendations it serves you up a poem a day but unlike the other too you can set it to push alert you so that you have one of those terrible littler red dots on your screen that everyone hates.
VS
I like to listen to a podcast while I walk and this podcast (also from the poetry foundation) is bi-weekly and not only reads a couple of poems to you but interviews poets who talk about their work and their process. This also helped me (an idiot) understand how much of poetry is about intentionality and editing, how it’s not just created in a single pass.
Buy a book and put it by your toilet/phone/remote
Physical books are good. They are your friends. They stare at you with a kind of animosity while you look at your phone. A poetry book is a good book to have because it can be picked up and then put back down to look at instagram or whatever. I highly recommend if you are new to poetry picking up an anthology of new poems or even (gasp) a literary journal, which will have some new poems as well as fiction and fiction. Literary journals could really use your financial support right now. I love the Southern Review and highly recommend it. Listen to this poem from their most recent issue.
Painting is “Lady Reading Poetry” by Ishibashi Kazunori
On Friday, I’ll be writing about my poetry goal and how it is good to challenge yourself during quarantine! And next Tuesday we will have our FIRST GUEST POST on poetry!