What Are You Reading?
What Are You Reading? A project sponsored by the Friends of the Macomb Public Library District to encourage reading and book discussion in our community. Would you like to share your favorite books with other readers? Please send your name, occupation or grade level, book author and title, and a brief statement about the book and why you liked it to Kate Joswick, [email protected].
Reviewer’s Name: Jim Courter Reviewer’s Occupation: Wordsmith Book Title: Good Poems Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor For over twenty years Garrison Keillor read poems on “The Writer’s Almanac,” a daily program on National Public Radio. In 2002 he selected some of those poems for print publication. They are divided into nineteen thematic sections, including O Lord, Music, Lovers, Day’s Work, Sons and Daughters, A Good Life, Language, Failure, and The End. All the poems were written originally in English. They range from Shakespeare to modern times, from the quotidian, even corny, to the sublime.
The best of that latter category are reminders of what Emily Dickinson meant in saying, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry,” or Kay Ryan in asking, “Is there a sensation more exquisite than the feeling of having the burden of oneself borne off by a poem?”
Indexes of titles and of poets’ names make it easy to find a specific poem or poet. Also at the back are brief biographies of the poets, including quotes regarding poetry among other topics. Those, along with Keillor’s introduction, in which he demystifies poetry and argues convincingly that it’s not only for the intellectual and literary elite but accessible to everyone, are worth the price of the book.
