“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

The poet Mary Oliver died this week, and I’m convinced that if we all would take a break to read her poetry, we would be strengthened by it. The level of anger – about the shut-down, the bickering, the brutal weather – is remarkably high right now. Mary Oliver believed that poetry is one of the things that can save us – that it can “lift the latch” and give a “glimpse into a greater paradise” that is “beyond the margins of the self.” Perhaps this is the time to take a deep breath and turn to poetry, such as the ones found here.

Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry. Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994, p. 122.