Good Poems: Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor

This is such a fantastic set of poems. I worked my way through them very slowly over a long period of time as I wanted to fully digest each one. I have never listened to The Writer’s Almanac but I have heard about it. The Introduction mentions that this collection contains poems that have made people stop in their tracks and listen with undivided attention to their radio. I can totally see that. Many of them grab at you, make you smile or have you nodding or laughing or crying along. I also loved the diversity of the selection, ranging from biblical Psalms to Shakespeare to Blake to Dickinson to Billy Collins and Robert Bly.

I listened to the audiobook which is read by various narrators including Garrison Keillor (who has the most marvelous voice) but I also own a copy of the book and have paused at various places to go back and reread the actual text because sometimes you just need to see the poem’s format to fully appreciate it. I believe that this audiobook is an abridged version so I look forward to reading the remainder of the poems in my paperback.

My only criticism of the audiobook is that I would have left longer gaps between each poem. I felt it needed more silence in between each work to be able to process the words I had just heard. This would also give the listener a chance to reset and to be ready for the next piece. There were little musical intervals from time to time which filled this purpose but not between each poem. I guess, perhaps, this is what the pause button is for, but built-in pauses would have worked much better for me.

It was hard to choose favourite poems as there are so many outstanding ones, but I was particularly touched by: The Possessive Case, Courage, Tell the truth but let it slant, Walking the dog, Solitude, Living in the Body, The Walloping Window-Blind.