Cole Calfee from Nashville, Tennessee, writes, “I’m 27 years old and worried that people of my generation don’t believe in the power of poetry. Do you have any favorite poems?”
Cole, thank you very much for this question. As a working artist whose main vocation is communicating the writing of others to an audience in the hope of achieving some medicinal effect or other, I feel very strongly about the poetry in which I’m lucky enough to swim every day. For example, I can just sit and read Laurie Anderson or Jeff Tweedy lyrics and swoon. Those two poets have even been so kind as to set their poems to music for us.
I’m not a particularly deep diver when it comes to “legit” poems, but here are a couple that have always thrilled me. You could do a lot worse than packing a copy of Mary Oliver’s American Primitive out to your favorite sycamore and soak in some of that language.
Here’s her “Instructions for living a life”:
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
And I have always adored these 16 beautifully simple words from William Carlos Williams. A reminder to worry less about shopping.
“The Red Wheelbarrow”:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Love,
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Duran Duran & Adam Ant