One of the things I noticed before I retired was that I found myself reading and re-reading the same poets. Classic poets, Romantic Era poets, Whitman, Dickenson, Pound, Eliot, Rimbaud, Beat Poets, etc. I needed to really up my game and refurbish my poetic brain. There are living poets that I love: Gillian Conoley, D.A. Powell, Trane Devore and others. But I haven’t really expanded that circle in twenty years. I set out to do that with “American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry” which is good (D.A. Powell is in there). I would recommend that for anyone interested in new poetry. One remarkable collection I came across was Pádraig Ó Tuama‘s “Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World.” The very title sounded like just the thing I needed to do going into my 65th year. What is great about this anthology is that you get a very intimate look into how Ó Tuama experiences the poetry. Each poem includes a personal reflection, the poem, and then his own teasing out of the poem’s context and meaning(s) in a short essay. You learn as much about the anthologist as you do the poetry. Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and conflict mediator from Cork, Ireland.
One of the reasons I decided to focus on Bluesky as a social media platform is that I found that there were a lot of writers active there. So reading, writing, and connecting with others is a part of that project.
