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March 11, 2010

A POEM A DAY ...

I've been paying more attention to poetry these days, something I tend to do when I'm writing as it puts me in touch with language in deeper and more interesting ways.  (I'm currently on an Anne Carson kick thanks to a recommendation from a friend; and I continue to be grateful for FSG's stubborn insistence on continuing to publish all manner of fine poets.)  So I read with great interest Siobahn Phillips's thoughtful post on her daily poetry reading habits:

Like many of you, I would venture, I tend to read poems in different ways. If it’s poetry that I will write about or teach, I read with pen in hand, notes nearby, or laptop humming. But if it’s poetry that I consume without academic purpose, I could be sitting in a chair, outside with my computer, browsing a bookstore, or paging through a journal on a bus. My attention varies in quantity and quality; some weeks I consume more poems, and some days I expend more energy on them—memorizing a stanza, say, rather than nodding and moving on. Sometimes I read everything by one writer in a continuous immersion, like a lover sequestered for a long weekend, and sometimes I read around, like a party guest moving from conversation to conversation.

When I began to consider reading and the everyday, however, I wondered what would happen if my desultory poetry consumption were more conscious. I thought I would try to make my reading habits part of the ordinary repetition I had been studying. After my caffeinated a.m. trawl of email messages and newspaper headlines, I decided, I would take in a regular allotment of just-for-pleasure poems, every morning. I would use some of the many sites that present daily or nearly-daily verse: “Today’s Poem” at the Academy of American Poets, the “Featured Poem” at Poetry magazine, the morning selection at Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, the “new poems” column at thepage.name—plus a site that offers a Shakespeare sonnet each day.

These rounds added maybe twenty minutes to my schedule; they weren’t onerous and didn’t feel drastically altering. But as I settled into the regimen, as I read and meta-read, taking notes and assessing results, I tracked definite shifts in reflection and perception.

You can find out what she discovered here.

Posted at 09:29 AM in Poets & Poetry |

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Comments

Niall

I took public transportation for 20 years in Chicago, and I take the bus to and from work here in LA (gasp!). So I've been able to savor the remarkable work of Poetry in Motion - a group that posts poems on buses and trains (where normally you would see advertisements). Commuting to work, reading poetry provided to you by the MTA. Priceless.

This is how I discovered the poetry of William Bronk, for example.

It's a pity there isn't more public poetry than there is.

Posted by: Niall | March 11, 2010 at 10:41 AM

Joelle Biele

Thanks so much for the link!

Posted by: Joelle Biele | March 11, 2010 at 03:11 PM

Betsy

Wow, what an article. I've bookmarked all her sites, plus a couple more. I love the notion of making "anti-habituating" habitual. A new daily routine!

Posted by: Betsy | March 12, 2010 at 08:29 PM

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