Good Poems for Hard Times selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor
I love poetry, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
I remember my English teacher (Junior year) Mrs. Wright drilling into us, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, recollected in tranquility." (Thank you, Wordsworth, for the concept, my apologies that she decided to condense your definition.)
I prefer to think of poetry as the distillation of an idea, experience, or feeling down to its essence. And some poets can capture that essentiality with such brilliance it stops me, and makes me relate to the world in a different way, if only briefly.
Garrison Keillor selected and arranged this collection of poems as a balm for our souls in these hard days. From Adrian Henri's tongue-in-cheek take on fairytales in his "Any prince to any princess" to Mary Oliver's poignant "When Death Comes," the poems collected here can make a bad day better, and a good day blessed.
I remember my English teacher (Junior year) Mrs. Wright drilling into us, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, recollected in tranquility." (Thank you, Wordsworth, for the concept, my apologies that she decided to condense your definition.)
I prefer to think of poetry as the distillation of an idea, experience, or feeling down to its essence. And some poets can capture that essentiality with such brilliance it stops me, and makes me relate to the world in a different way, if only briefly.
Garrison Keillor selected and arranged this collection of poems as a balm for our souls in these hard days. From Adrian Henri's tongue-in-cheek take on fairytales in his "Any prince to any princess" to Mary Oliver's poignant "When Death Comes," the poems collected here can make a bad day better, and a good day blessed.
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