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Something For You, from POEMS, POEMS EVERYWHERE

April 2, 2025
Please Describe How You Became a Writer
Possibly I began writing as a refuge from our insulting first grade text book.
Come, Jane, come.
Look, Dick, look.
Were there ever duller people in the world?
You had to tell them to look at things?
Why weren’t they looking to begin with?
-Naomi Shihab Nye
Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa is a favorite because of the sly humor and poignancy in his haiku.

I know this world
is a drop of dew—
and still… still…

-Issa
A poem that exerts a quiet yet powerful influence is Marie Howe’s My Dead Friends found in the excellent anthology, Risking Everything. We could only include a small excerpt in the post, but below is the poem in its entirety.

My Dead Friends
I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question
to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were—
it’s green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I’ll do.

-Marie Howe
In her most recent book, New and Selected PoemsHowe’s work continues to inspire us. Her observations of nature and reflections upon her own life often contain timely wit and insight. For example, while some people complain that they become “invisible” to the culture as they age, Howe exclaims:

Finally, I can slip through the world without being so adamantly in it.

Ada Limón, the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate and another favorite of ours, often incorporates short vignettes from her personal life experience into her poetry—for example this touching tribute to her stepfather as she describes his attentive tenderness in these lines from her poem, A Good Story.
But right now all I want is a story about human kindness,
the way once, when I couldn’t stop crying
because I was fifteen and heartbroken,
he came in and made me eat a small pizza
he’d cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.
Maybe I was just hungry, I said.
And he nodded, holding out the last piece.-Ada Limón
We find poetry all around and within us, even when we aren’t particularly looking for it. We may stumble across it in the poetic quality of a piece of prose, or quite literally, as is the case with Henry David Thoreau, in the naturally composed sentences scattered throughout his journals. Just add line breaks and there’s your poem!

It is as sweet a
mystery to me as ever,
what this world is.
-Henry Thoreau
Poetry turns up everywhere, and we are always expanding our definition of what poetry is. You don’t have to set out to read poetry in order to find yourself experiencing it as part of everyday life and deriving comfort and sustenance from it.

These are a few of our other favorite poetry posts:


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If you are interested in exploring further, please take a look at our wide-ranging collection of new and classic poetry, and you can also link to a few of our earlier conversations about poetry:
Meeting Your MusePoetry Is For You, and Musings For Poetry Month.Thanks for being a part of our poetry adventure.Happy Reading!

Heidi Schmidt
Manager/Buyer
heidi@townhousebooks.com

This poetry issue is dedicated to
our beloved friend
Joan O’Leary
(1935-2024)
Offered by https://townhousebooks.com/

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