Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The first poems I read today...

Though this is not likely to be something I keep up over the long term, I thought I'd pilfer from other, more dedicated bloggers and note the first poems I read today...

making a garden by Kerry Ryan, from the May 2nd installment of May Day.

Lighthouse Park by Bren Simmers, from the May 2nd installment of May Day.

At Summerford's Nursing Home by Rodney Jones, from Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005.

And if my recommendation isn't enough to make you read the poems, I will commit a further theft, from Edward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, to admonish you:

Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them when you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture - the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us - has momentarily stopped.

These poems have come a great distance to find you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert."

WTF? WHO is wide awake and fully alert in the early morning.

Oh, wait. Anita, perhaps?

Ariel Gordon said...

It says 'when you are wide awake' - it doesn't say how often that's supposed to happen, does it?

I'm a confirmed stay up late sleep late type myself - but for many years, I was on the water by 5:45 am for rowing.

But as soon as I got that nasty fitness thing out of my system, I reverted/regressed right back to ungodly late.

(I know several smug early morning types, by the way...)