Poetry

In her book, Tiny Beautiful Things author Cheryl Strayed AKA Dear Sugar advised that all people in their twenties should ‘go to a bookstore and buy ten books of poetry and read them each five times, because the truth is inside.’

For reasons I didn’t understand the idea resonated with me so strongly. I mean, all anyone does it give people my age advice, but this advice, I couldn’t forget about. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of poetry, but never really read any, even the classics. I just felt it wasn’t for me. I was too middle class, too cynical, I couldn’t write my own (though I rarely tried and was often happy with the results when I did) and, probably my biggest reason for avoiding poetry; I thought wasn’t smart enough to understand it. I’ve decided to set that idea aside and pursue a gentle experiment in human expansion. I took the book voucher my father gave me and bought ten books of poetry. They are;

[if !supportLists]1. [endif]‘Milk and Honey’ by Rupi Kaur

[if !supportLists]2. [endif]‘The Waste Land’ by TS Eliot

[if !supportLists]3. [endif]‘Envelope Poems’ by Emily Dickinson

[if !supportLists]4. [endif]‘The Complete Poems of John Keats’ by John Keats

[if !supportLists]5. [endif]‘The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath’ by Sylvia Plath

[if !supportLists]6. [endif]‘Refusing Heaven’ by Jack Gilbert

[if !supportLists]7. [endif]‘Dream Work’ by Mary Oliver

[if !supportLists]8. [endif]‘The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman’ by Walt Whitman

[if !supportLists]9. [endif]‘Collected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[if !supportLists]10. [endif]‘The Essential Rumi’ the Coleman Banks translation of Rumi

I'm going to be trying to read an hour of poetry a day, not aiming too high, as is my usual Achilles heel. I’ll be updating my progress as I go. Wish me luck. I hope I find the truth.