New and Selected Poems

I wish I read more poetry. Sometimes I come across one that cuts right to my core or perfectly sums up what I'm feeling and it's wonderful. When you relate to a poem like that there's this wonderful feeling of connection and the loneliness lifts a little bit.

But poems can also be dense or obscure. When you get it, you get it. When you don't, it can take a lot of work. The solution, of course, is to read more poetry. Practice and familiarity will make it easier to understand them. And they're short.

So I bought a book of Mary Oliver's poems, which are at least modern and fairly accessible. I read a few every night before going to sleep, which was a good way to work through it. I can't read more than a few at a time. But this let me digest them, and I ended up really liking most of them. And a few were exactly what I needed to read, which is what I'd been hoping for.

I should really keep this up. Poetry before bed seems like a good habit to get in to.