How to Add Poetry Into Your Life

Here's something you might not know about me: in addition to my pedestrian English major in college, I graduated with a concentration in Poetry. My senior thesis was an original collection of poems inspired by my summers spent on a tiny island in Maine. I was chosen as the poet laureate of my high school class. My first tentative poems in middle school were about snowmen and baptism.

For as large as poetry loomed in my life then, it mostly feels far away from my life now: raising children, keeping a home, writing goal-setting products (!), trying to find time to workout here and there. But the pull of the perfect line has never quite left me, and when I look around, it seems others are catching on, too: poetry is having something of a renaissance. 

And while this is a bit startling (who has time for something like poetry anymore?!), it also makes sense: many of us are desperate for the analog, the beautiful, the ambiguous—anything to slow down time, anything that insists on nuance and thoughtfulness instead of screaming its opinion.

If you, too, are weary from shouting matches on social media, from the endless grind of productivity culture, from the tender monotony of caring for others—enter poetry. A poem insists on being read slowly; it resists the modern urge to skim and assume. If you read too quickly, you will miss the magic. 

Today, a primer for those who are intrigued by the world of poetry but new to it. Below, I'm sharing a few ideas of how to add poetry into your life, and a few volumes with which to start. Enjoy!

The perfect companion for a stack of poetry books: the Cultivated Reading Journal!

How to add poetry into your life:

A few ideas:

1. Open your day with it.

Instead of rolling over and grabbing your phone or throwing back the covers and sprinting out of bed, try reaching for a book of poetry and letting wonder be the first thing that enters your mind. If reading while still in bed doesn't work, try pairing your first cup of coffee or tea with a poem.

2. Let it add delight to your day. 

Because of its brief nature, poetry can fit into the odd corners of your day—when you're idling in carpool, waiting at the doctor's office, eating lunch. A dip into beautiful words, even for just a few minutes, can be refreshing in the midst of a busy day.

3. Close your day with it.

Once back in bed, pick up a poetry volume first before you crack open your novel or shut off the light. Read one poem and sit with it a moment. The chaos of the day tends to recede a bit at night, leaving you more receptive to the quietness of poetry.

4. Keep it close at hand.

For reading poetry to become a habit, it helps to make it easily accessible: keep a volume on your bedside table, on your desk, or next to your coffee pot. Or, sign up for something like the Poetry Foundation's daily email, which sends the poem of the day straight to your inbox.

5. Focus on quality, not quantity.

Poetry doesn't conform to reading goals and is not impressed by boasts of clocking 100 books a year. It's meant to be taken in in sips. Just 1-2 poems a day is probably the right amount for most of us.

6. Find your style.

There's a poet or style of poetry out there for everyone, but if you don't know where to start, it can be discouraging to try to find it. If you're new to poetry, I recommend starting with an anthology—see below!

7. Try reading it out loud.

If slowing down feels hard, or if the words on the page seem a little too enigmatic, try reading the poem out loud. Poetry asks you to pay attention, and the forced slowing of reading aloud can help with this.

8. Memorize it.

A memorized poem becomes part of your internal furniture—a place to rest when needed, a fixture of who you are. My college Chaucer professor made us memorize the first 18 lines of the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales not just to force us to become familiar with speaking Middle English, but because he wanted us to always have beautiful words to recall when we were feeling bored, or sad, or unmoored. Twenty years later, I can still recite all 18 lines, much to my kids' delight.

9. Don't worry so much about what it means. 

"A poem can feel like a locked safe in which the combination is hidden inside," writes Mark Yakich. "In other words, it’s okay if you don’t understand a poem. Sometimes it takes dozens of readings to come to the slightest understanding. And sometimes understanding never comes. It’s the same with being alive: Wonder and confusion mostly prevail." Amen.

Poetry you might love:

The breadth of poetry available is impressive: there's truly something for everyone. If you need help finding an entry point, here are three suggestions:

1. A poetry anthology

A poetry anthology brings together many different poets, combining their work into one volume. This can be a great way to try on different voices and styles and find what you gravitate toward. You might look for a more general collection, like The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, The Best Poems of the English Language, or Good Poems. Or, you might seek out an anthology keyed to one of your interests or identities: for example, I have Contemporary Poetry of New England and The Maine Poets on my bookshelf. A local bookseller would probably love to point you in the right direction here!

2. An accessible poet

While I hesitate to classify some poets as "accessible" and others as—what, inaccessible?—it's true that some poetry uses language that's a bit clearer and closer to everyday life than others. Some of my favorites in this category include Billy Collins (start with his volume Sailing Alone Around the Room), Mary Oliver, Richard Wilbur, Wendell Berry, and Stanley Kunitz, who wrote my favorite poem of all time ("Indian Summer at Land's End").

3. A modern poet

Taking one more step into modernity, we have what you might call the Instagram poet: those whose work took off on social media. While these folks don't have the veneer of traditional publishing, they can be a welcoming entry point into reading more poetry. Try Kate Baer, Laura Wifler, or Morgan Harper Nichols.

Wherever you start, whichever poet you start with, just start! Poetry helps expand our minds, appreciate beauty, and notice the details of our lives, which often leads to gratitude. Again, Mark Yakich: "There is nothing really lost in reading a poem. If you don’t understand the poem, you lose little time or energy. On the contrary, there is potentially much to gain—a new thought, an old thought seen anew, or simply a moment separated from all the other highly structured moments of your time." I couldn't agree more.

Tell me: do you read poetry? Have any poetry recommendations for the group? Let us know in the comments!