The Joy Of Poetry

I've been making good progress with regard to the little cache of poetry purchased in August (I think it was) last year, and am now starting the final slim volume of the seven, Michael Ondaatje's Handwriting, the first poem of which, A Gentleman Compares His Virtue To A Piece Of Jade, quietly impressed me. I finished Mary Oliver's volume Dream Work a couple of days ago and fell in love with several of the poems - though, at the same time, being fairly baffled by several others. (But since I quite enjoy bafflement that should not be interpreted as some kind of barrier to my general enjoyment of the book.) I bought Dream Work on spec, never having heard of Ms Oliver before - despite the Pulitzer Prize it seems she won - and I'm very glad I did. And the same can be said of my discoveries over the last few months of: David Harsent, Kathleen Jamie, Daljit Nagra and Alice Oswald. (Especially the last named!)

I've said it before and I'll say it again (as I so frequently do these days, I'm afraid): We live in a Golden Age for poetry; there's too much good stuff for a single reader to deal with.

I'll also say again that the technique I've developed for dealing with poetry collections works ever so well. Start at the beginning and read in sequence to the end, without looking back. Then go back and enjoy the particular gems that haven't faded at all. It's striking how often I find the poems in the second half of a collection really taking off for me. (The last poem in Dream Work, The Sunflowers, struck me as a tiny classic.) Could it be that reading a poet in sequence somehow teaches you how to read their work?

By the way, titles like The Joy of Poetry are so drearily often attached to the kind of anthologies that are used in school to 'teach' poetry and, ironically, get associated in the minds of many, perhaps most, kids with a singularly joyless activity. But I mean my heading un-ironically. I can't think of any other kind of reading that evokes the same quiet gem-like satisfaction bordering upon joy that soaking in one heck of a good poem does.