I have nine shelves of poetry, close to 600 books. When I want poetry, I walk over and grab a book. I haven’t read them all, and may not. They serve as a spring of imagery from which to refresh myself from time to time.
Roughly a fifth of them were purchased deliberately when I searched for a specific book of poetry. The rest are from remainder piles, used book stores, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, yard sales, and the community library used book sale. There was intent behind each selection based on what was available. The shelves are not as random as one may think.
When I encounter the 25 or so poems I once wrote, the words on the page come from a place of magic. I don’t know how I wrote them and couldn’t write them again. Words transcend the author. I’m better off leaving them where they are and writing something new.
To that end, I started a project of reading poetry. Each day I walk over to the shelves with eyes closed and pick a random book. Then I flip it open and read the first poem that appears. I select one line and write it down in a spiral notebook along with details of the encounter and my reaction. The notebook has 70 pages, so we’ll see where filling it takes me.
A septuagenarian is aware of the remaining viable days in a life. If I can restart writing poetry, it would be a productive use of some of mine. A person has to do something in life. For me, this is one thing.
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