The Writer's Almanac

Erato, Muse of Poetry
Edward Poynter

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important

beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine...

Those are the first lines of a poem by Marianne Moore, 1887-1972. Of course she does like poetry, but she is referring here to the type of poetry that is not sincere or honest. The kind of poems that are famous because of their obscurity. Poems don't have to be obvious to be good, but I think the best ones start out in a simple place and then transport us somewhere else.

For some very good poetry, you should listen to Garrison Keillor's the Writer's Almanac on Public Radio-- it's an understated little masterpiece of a program. He talks for a few minutes in his soothing voice about "this day in history" and then he always reads a short poem. That's it. But Keillor has a knack for selecting unusual and accessible poems. The poetry on the programs has also been collected and published in anthologies. I have a couple that John gave me as presents and I read them all the time.

Unfortunately, I'm usually not in the car at the right time to hear the radio program or I forget to turn on NPR at home. But the great thing is you can subscribe free to the Writer's Almanac and they will email the program automatically first thing in the morning, before it even plays on the radio. What a nice thing to see in your email queue at the start of the day.

When everything in the Information Age starts to sound like everything else, a daily helping of poetry is good for what ails you. There are some truly wonderful things about the time and place we live in.