Review 321: Avidly Reads Poetry

Avidly Reads Poetry by Jacquelyn Ardam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I hadn’t come across this series Avidly Reads, before this book. The series is described as brief books about how culture makes us feel. There are only a handful of these books published, so far. This one takes on the topic of poetry.

The book itself is a bit of a poetry literature criticism class, with a touch of memoir all wrapped up into several long essays. There are four chapters with one short coda, all discussing poetry. The focus is on several types of poems, but the feelings aspect related to: wanting, learning, resisting, soothing and losing.

The first chapter is about the sonnet and wanting and perhaps provides the most autobiographical material as well, with the author talking about her entry into poems as a teenager. The later chapters had more of the literature criticism class aspect to them, with one in particular (documentary poems) discussing a class she held recently and what her students focused on and were taught.

Ms Ardam does not shy away from letting you know there are some poets she does not like, one of whom is a favorite of mine, Billy Collins. I like his poetry as it is accessible and filled with humor where too often poetry seems to be a Very Serious Business.

I don’t think I would have wanted a longer book on this topic, it was enough here to remind myself about reading poetry, while also providing insight into the more recently developments in that world. This one is heavily into diversity and inclusion within poetry, and shows how the entry point to poetry can be something other than the standard sonnet of historical literature classes. These types of poems may be off putting to people who could otherwise gain from experiencing poetry. I did appreciate the write up of how Ardam helped her students get into difficult poems, like avant-garde poetry.