Good Poems

My mother received a cassette book from Talking Books titled Good Poems by Various (authors). It is an anthology of poems chosen by Garrison Keillor from a radio program on National Public Radio (NPR) called The Writer's Almanac described as "Today in history & a poem or two." I found it online & if I knew how to, I would subscribe to the podcast.

The book was returned unread. I didn't think she'd like it, but I, of course, did. It is hard to listen to poem after poem after poem. It is much easier to have the book in your lap & savor the poem or listen to them one at a time with commentary.

A Goodreads friend, Wayne, from Australia, posted:

 Inside my copy of William Wordsworth I've written down what he considered to be the role of poetry: "...the most philosophical of all writing" whose object is "truth...carried alive into the heart by passion." WOW!!!!

I love Wordsworth's poem in praise of the sonnet.

"Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cell;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highestPeak of Furness-fell,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods,'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls(for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find some brief solace there, as I have found"

Read it out loud and you will find it falls into place much better.