How to Read a Poem - and Start a Poetry Circle - Rilegato

If poetry is a tantalizing invitation – into the world the poem conjures, the interior life of the poet, our own interior lives – then How to Read a Poem...And Start a Poetry Circle is a means of accepting that invitation. In gathering a potent group of poems she calls her “talismans” into this slender volume, Molly Peacock presents us with a book of ways to explore the romance we have with words we can’t quite hold.

As an acclaimed poet and a freethinking teacher of poetry for more than twenty-five years, Peacock is perfectly poised to strip away this art’s daunting mystique to reveal how it works its alluring alchemy on us. Rather than coolly dissecting poems, she opens them the way “a love relationship is deepened – through the blind delight of examining it with the senses and the intellect all at once.” Even better, she shows us why poetry begs to be read aloud to another person, discussed, and enjoyed among friends.

Through her discussion of fourteen poems – some ancient, some contemporary, and many by well-known poets, including Philip Larkin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, and Lorna Crozier – Peacock leads us on a passionate, intuitive journey into the deliciously mysterious and bewitching world of verse. Like a friend, she introduces us to her friends; she shows us how to form poetry circles of our own, to share our private pleasures within the rounded borders of a communal reading group, and invites us to begin the rich, enthralling, and endlessly rewarding search for talismans of our own.