Tuesday Tome - Living Things

Here's a lovely little book I'd recommend for summer poetry, Living Things: Collected Poems, by Anne Porter.  I first read through it a couple years ago. Many mornings, I would start the day with this book and a cup of coffee. I'd go outside to one of the Adirondack chairs by the front porch and read one or two poems.

These poems have the simplicity of bread and wine, but are filled the nourishing depth and wisdom of Porter's life – the fields of grain and acres of vineyard from which they are harvested. They are as austere as a plainsong melody, but resonate with the echos of a vast cathedral. They are never preachy, yet move the reader toward faith and kindness.

From The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2006, by Lucette Lagnado, "A 95-Year-Old Poet Finds Her Muse and Literary Praise."

Mrs. Porter was 83 years old when her first volume of poetry, "An Altogether Different Language," was published in 1994. The book was named a finalist in the National Book Awards. A judge of the awards, David Lehman, a poet and professor at The New School in New York, subsequently decided to include Mrs. Porter in the Oxford Book of American Poetry, placing one of her longer poems alongside the works of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot.

"Anne Porter is a marvelously talented poet who has not yet received the recognition that is her due," says Mr. Lehman, who praises her work for its "literary simplicity and directness."
Asked why she keeps writing poems through her 80s and 90s, Mrs. Porter responds that art may be the only pursuit that old age can't wreck:

"You can't sing anymore, you can't dance anymore, you can't drive anymore -- but you can still write," she says.