Three to Read: Barbara Eisenhart on the Synthesis of Poetry
Carl Sandburg defines poetry as “the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” I have always loved this definition of poetry! To me, it means that poetry embraces both beauty (flowers and nature for our spiritual needs) and sustenance (food and nourishment for our physical needs).
Some people are hesitant to read poetry, but once one finds some poems that resonate, it helps a lot. We have all read poetry, beginning with nursery rhymes we learned as children. Who hasn’t recited “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep?!”
I began loving poetry in high school English classes when we were introduced to Emily Dickinson (“Hope is the Thing with Feathers”), Robert Frost (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”), and Edgar Allan Poe (“The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”). And then, in college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I loved Kahlil Gibran (“The Prophet”) and Rod McKuen (“Listen to the Warm”). My favorite college class was English Romantic Poetry. I also wrote a lot of poetry during those years, mostly about love!
Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet. For years, I have had The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson on my bookshelf. I love her style of writing “slant” which means that she doesn’t always say everything in a straightforward way. She often writes ambiguously and says things in a wonderfully different way. Last summer, my husband Forry and I visited the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, MA; a dream come true for me! It was such a thrill to tour the house where she grew up and wrote her poetry. I loved standing in her bedroom, looking out the window above her little table/desk where she wrote her poetry. When we lived in Ann Arbor, MI, I saw the Belle of Amherst, a one-woman play starring Julie Christie as Emily Dickinson. I never forgot it.
A favorite anthology of poetry that I recently discovered and love is She Walks in Beauty, A Woman’s Journey Through Poems, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy (2011). The poems are centered around the stages of a woman’s life, such as “Falling in Love,” “Marriage,” “Motherhood,” Friendship,” “Beauty,” and “How to Live.” Caroline notes that “reading poems can help bring clarity and insight to emotions that can be confusing or contradictory.” Some of the poets included in the anthology are Rumi, Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sylvia Plath, Amy Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Bronte, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Mary Oliver. The book is a lovely way to read a few poems at a time when the mood strikes.
The third book of poems that I love is Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2017). It is a collection of her best work. I keep this book on my bedside table, and it is comforting to read her poems before I go to sleep at night. Oliver’s poems expound on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. The poems in this collection were arranged by Oliver herself shortly before her death in 2019. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. In 2007, she was declared to be the country’s best-selling poet.
In conclusion, I hope you will give poetry a try. What I love about poetry is that it uses concentrated language: less words, more meaning. All words are chosen carefully by the poet so that each word is important. I also love the sound of the words and their layers of meaning. For me, poetry adds definition and clarity to my place in the world, and I can’t imagine life without it.
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas Johnson
She Walks in Beauty, A Woman’s Journey Through Poems, selected by Caroline Kennedy
Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, selected by the author
Barbara Eisenhart has always been a lover of poetry. She has been a community volunteer for over 40 years, serving many years on the Board of Governors of the Guthrie Memorial Library - Hanover’s Public Library and the Hanover YWCA Board of Directors. She holds a B.S. degree in Secondary Education (French and English) from Shippensburg University (PA), studied her junior year abroad at Universite de Montpellier, Southern France, and completed her M.A. degree in French from Middlebury College (VT). Barbara has lived in Hanover, PA, since 1981 with her husband, Forry. They have three grown children and four adored grandchildren.
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