Poetry!
My poetry books arrived today! Oh how I love Billy Collins. So much that I believe my entire friends list (all two of you) should read him. I cannot pick a favourite, but this is probably the most appropriate as an introduction:
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
I just love his turn of phrase, and the way he draws you into the poem with humour then throws you a curve ball, or makes ordinary things so wonderfully complicated and profound. And I wish I could be half as good at imagery...