Keith Leonard : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I tend to read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift once a year. It’s a book that puts poetry in context of gift cultures, rather than capitalist cultures. I find it’s essential for me to be reminded that poems are not commodities to be sold. Or at least they don’t work well as commodities. Rather, poetry is an ethic of living. For some reason, I forget that, and reading Hyde’s The Gift brings me back to writing, encouraging me that the intension of poetry exists outside the way American culture currently affixes value.