imaginary conversation by linda pastan
today's email is best enjoyed while sipping your favourite morning drink
[source: wallhere]
Good Morning!
Recently, I’ve taken up reading poetry again in an attempt to fight a vicious reading slump and it turns out poems provide an excellent way to press pause —I’m sure you already know that, but I hope you’ll still forgive me for using this space as a gentle reminder.
In a 1983 interview for The Paris Review, poet and novelist May Sarton said that “the poem is an essence. It captures perhaps a moment of violent change, but it captures a moment.” There is so much joy to be found by loosing oneself within the world of a poem, to catch that essence.
For a long time I believed I was not equipped to read poetry, that I did not have the appropriate knowledge to ‘get it’. Poetry seemed unavailable to me, a secret code only a chosen few could interpret. Perhaps it was the carefully crafted words and structure that felt too intimidating. Ultimately, I understood that poetry is for everyone, myself included. It’s not about the lines, the metaphors, the references, the ellipsis, the whatever, it’s mostly about how it makes you feel.
I would say reading a poem is also a form of meditation, like carving a bubble in time and space to transcend the mundane. Although poetry may require a different kind of focus than reading prose, I feel it has the potential to be the ideal bite-sized break. The perfect antidote to the non-stop worrying and thinking many of us are afflicted with on the daily.
Here’s one of the poems I’ve been holding on to lately. What if we lived each day as if it it were the first, as opposed to the last? A miraculous shift in perspective and attitude that has left me in awe since I first read this poem.
[source: poets.org]
Read a poem (you can choose a different one), see how it feels. Let yourself have faith in the magic of poetry, seek joy in the infinite modulations of its beauty with an open heart. Like Eve rub your eyes at the sun coming up, feel the raw astonishment at all that is beautiful around you.
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