About book She Walks In Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (2011)
I'll admit that I felt sheepish buying this book. I mean, I saw it in an Anthropologie store; it's subtitled, "A woman's journey through poems" (does it get more mawkish than that?); and the art design is just gorgeous throughout (beautiful paper, images, etc). Everything about this book was designed to appeal to me, like a flower does to a bee, and although my stubborn instinct was to resist, I could tell there was something of substance inside.SO--I'm proud to say that at the age of 32, I finally GET poetry. I sooo get it. Turns out an anthology is the perfect entry into a genre. Cheryl Strayed, in her EXCELLENT book Dear Sugar, advises her younger self to read more poetry, and her advice, turns out, is everywhere exactly right. Poetry distills an experience into the most potent, profound emotions. Maybe you have to be in the right frame of mind. If so, I am. I loved this. A short one for you:"Don't try to rush things" by Antonio MachadoDon't try to rush things:for the cup to run over,it must first be filled. What I really enjoyed about this book was the introductions to each of the chapters of poetry selected by Caroline Kennedy. Some of what she wrote was so enticing that I immediately turned to the poems she mentioned in the introduction and read them. Another thing that I liked was that the selected poems are not "the usual suspects" but instead poems that I had not experienced. I read most of the poems in the book, not all. Poetry has to resonate with me, and not all of the poems did.
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A well thought out selection of appealing poems, nicely presented.
—Jessica
