"Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. It is not necessarily a moralizer; it does not necessarily improve one’s character; it does not even teach good manners. It is a beautiful work of nature, like an eagle or a high sunrise. You owe it no duty. If you like it, listen to it; if not, let it alone."
-- Robinson Jeffers
The late great literary critic Harold Bloom once said that we read poetry to help us become free artists of ourselves. “The art of reading poetry,” Bloom tells us, “is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.”
“All great poetry asks us to be possessed by it.”
In his book, The Art of Reading Poetry (2000), Bloom writes that poems help us speak more clearly to our inner “otherness”—the best and oldest parts of ourselves—allowing us to overhear our own voices in solitude, to help find ourselves more fully, and achieve a deeper self-autonomy.
“Poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves.”
The novelist and poet, James Dickey, once pondered: “What is poetry? And why has it been around so long? … When you really feel it, a new part of you happens, or an old part is renewed, with surprise and delight at being what it is…”
He goes on to write:
"The first thing to understand about poetry is that it comes to you from outside you, in books or in words, but that for it to live, something from within you must come to it and meet it and complete it. Your response with your own mind and body and memory and emotions gives a poem its ability to work its magic; if you give to it, it will give to you, and give plenty.”
Below are 15 handpicked poetic gems that I keep within arm’s reach. Books that will forever feed my soul until the end of my time here. I hope you enjoy it.