Reader of the Week

For the past several decades, I have read at least two hours every day (yes, even while working several overtime-stressed jobs). Although I rarely go back to reread books I’ve read in the past, I admire people who have a favorite book (finger-worn and filled with marginalia), the way I admire those who watch the same movie again and again to catch all of the nuances. But I am chronically curious and endlessly impatient, and re-runs don’t hold the same sense of enchantment. However, recently I did purposefully set out to find a book I had read many years ago. Poem Crazy by Susan Woolridge, has an exuberance that entranced me as a beginning poet, and the exercises helped spark several of my early attempts. “A poem is a place where chaos can play,” she writes, and sometimes we need a book to remind us that controlled abandon is the best playground for any artist.