Elizabeth J. Coleman : part three

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

My first response to this question was that there are so many poets to read, I only move forward. But as I’ve thought about it, there are many poems and books I return to for comfort and renewal.

First, slightly off topic but important to me is that I try to read the Academy of American Poets “Poem-a-Day” first thing every morning. That and Tricycle’s “Daily Dharma” are essential to me as I start my day.

I always return to the poems of Apollinaire, particularly “Le Pont Mirabeau.” Nothing is more musical to my ear than that poem in French. And all of Apollinaire’s poetry, which I first studied in college as a French literature major, is a source of comfort and pleasure.

I find inspiration in Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come,” and in its opposite, Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle.” The latter I first read in high school. 

I always feel better when I’ve read a poem of Frank O’Hara’s.

As a mindfulness student and teacher, I often return to Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness,” to Kabir, to Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow.”

I love haiku, and here’s one that is with me constantly, by Basho, translated by Jane Hirshfield,

    In Kyoto,
    hearing the cuckoo,
    I long for Kyoto.

And, speaking of Hirshfield, I often think about this poem of hers, “It Was Like This: You Were Happy.”

I love Czesław Miłosz, Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda.

I find comfort in my battered paperback copy of Six Centuries of Great Poetry, edited by Robert Penn Warren & Albert Erskine (Dell, 1955, 75 cents), Gerard Manley Hopkins, particularly “Spring and Fall,” which I studied in tenth grade, my Selected Poetry of W.H. Auden, reissued in ’58. I often reread the work of Yehudi Amichai.

I know I’ve left off many poets and poems I admire. Another time! What a pleasure to think about this and look over my bookshelves.