When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
This will sound stodgy and canonical, and I promise I read loads of new poetry, but a poem that endlessly engages me is Tennyson’s “The Lotos Eaters.” Every time I read it, I’m thrown. And I get different messages from it—at times, I find it full of despair, but at other times it seems like a glorious permission slip to just be. The way the lines begin to lengthen and lose track of their own meter, the rolling and confused rhythm of the final stanza, the debate over whether worry and hustle have any merit at all, the ultimate question of what our lives are worth…everything in it absolutely knocks me over. More people need to read it today.
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