Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Nine Cheers for Good Poems


My book club read some poems a few months back. We picked Garrison Keiller's anthologies (Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times), with the idea that we'd all get to pick one poem and we'd concentrate on those picked. My book club does not like to strain our brains; we are in it for the good times. But we had fun with the poems. They are all from his radio show, so meant to be heard while doing life; short poems that you could listen to while cooking, or driving, or cleaning.

Now, this was months ago. I checked our local library, but didn't see the book. I consulted a librarian, and she thought it might be lost, so she put in on hold for me and started an investigation. I forgot about it and got the other book from the county library and we had our meeting. Weeks went by, and suddenly I got a call from the librarian -- they found my book! Hooray.

Well, if they go to that much trouble, I figure I should read the book. Someday. So it sat, looking hopefully at me from my bedside table, until I noticed that I'd had it for 8 weeks and it had to go back on Thursday. So I've been living in poems for the past weekend, and it's fun. All the poems are short, which I like, because if I read a poem over three pages I want to get something out of it, but I'll experiment with short stuff. Also fun was that we had listened to the audio version a few months ago, and I could hear some of the words echoing back. I've got nine going into my poetry notebook, of which the family favorite is the pairing of Williams and Gambino's "This Is Just To Say" poems. P thinks they should assign this type to his class.

Forgive me
you were
driving me
insane

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