Yes! More poetry in our public lives! What if we thumbed through a slim volume of poems instead of scrolling social media when we needed a brain brake?
oooof that's a good poem. And I loved the way you wrote about this episode, particularly this paragraph: "I love seeing a book of poems in a hospital bed because that’s where they belong: in our lives as they are lived daily, not just on the moldering shelves of library basements, where students sometimes imagine that they live."
Thank you so much for this comment, Alicia. It was hard for me to determine why I loved seeing the book in the bed so much at first, but when I drilled down into it I realized it was because it felt like something I would do. It's how I experience poetry as a poet: bodily, with books sharing intimate moments of my life.
Well, and as writers that's how we want our work to be experienced, right? Carried in people's purses, read on the subway, a stolen ten minutes on the couch while the baby naps, whatever. Think of how many books have changed your life while you were just propped up in bed with a crick in your neck you'd regret the next day.
Yes! More poetry in our public lives! What if we thumbed through a slim volume of poems instead of scrolling social media when we needed a brain brake?
Preach!
oooof that's a good poem. And I loved the way you wrote about this episode, particularly this paragraph: "I love seeing a book of poems in a hospital bed because that’s where they belong: in our lives as they are lived daily, not just on the moldering shelves of library basements, where students sometimes imagine that they live."
Thank you so much for this comment, Alicia. It was hard for me to determine why I loved seeing the book in the bed so much at first, but when I drilled down into it I realized it was because it felt like something I would do. It's how I experience poetry as a poet: bodily, with books sharing intimate moments of my life.
Well, and as writers that's how we want our work to be experienced, right? Carried in people's purses, read on the subway, a stolen ten minutes on the couch while the baby naps, whatever. Think of how many books have changed your life while you were just propped up in bed with a crick in your neck you'd regret the next day.
Yes. This is so astute.