Listen to the music

Being utterly unable to focus and read anything remotely challenging I find myself in a swath of magazines, celebrity gossip and fashion websites and hidden behind a stack of otherwise utterly embarrassing Chick Lit and murder mysteries (one felt so oddly familiar I must have already read it but of course could not remember who died or why I cared). And please Harlen Coben, stop making me think you are Dennis Lehane -- I buy these Cobens only to hurl them against the wall. Cannot stand the lovable lug who stars in these and his completely boring "perky" girl next door girlfriend.

The season of hearts and flowers has, thankfully, just slid by -- the cinemas are still filled with date night Rom Coms but that will pass soon enough. Still, the season has led me back to easy-to-read, because so often read before, poetry.

I find myself drawn to the cadence and language, and the shimmer of the big ideas behind the beautiful words. Reading poetry, especially familiar poetry, is soothing and soul-feeding -- it feels like rubbing fingers against smooth and warm worry beads and is a faithful reminder that the quotidien is not all there is.

Poetry soothes as music does, holding a rhythm akin to heartbeat. Shakes up the brainwaves at the same time.

Try it. Try reading Auden, my best friend when not in the thrall of Eliot (I did say it's great to return to the familiar) or even the Sonnets: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds".... Okay, so you grew tired of this one after all those weddings of your youth but still, this is an encouraging assurance that it's not you it's him, isn't it? My favorite Sonnet is 119. That's a sonnet for a girl who's been around, let me tell you.

Or Anne Sexton. Or read "Daddy" and count yourself lucky. Or William Carlos Williams. Read To Elsie, where "the pure products of America go crazy" -- this is a poem for someone who grew up in ugliness and maybe beat it, a wonderful show of understanding and empathy for those who could not. It ends with poignancy, and if you don't feel the fire of "gotta keep kicking against the pricks" then you are Elsie and have a friend in Williams: "It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off/No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car."

Poetry makes you think bigger, in spite of yourself.