How I started liking poems (Two books did it)
Originally handwritten on 20.08.2025
I've never been a poetry person. At school it felt too cheesy or complicated.
That switch flipped when when a friend said, "Don't analyse. Just feel it. Let it create images in your mind".
That one line changed the way I approached poems.
I was curious about Frank O'Hara after seeing Meditations in an Emergency in Mad Men, but I actually started with Mary Oliver's Devotions. She's a true nature poet at heart.
Reading it on the balcony, early morning or just before sunset, felt like a ritual.
Devotions feels like a walk through the jungle. Or just sitting by a pond, simply watching. It's breathing with nature.
Morning in the New Land especially stayed with me. It reads like opening your eyes to a fresh world everyday. Ordinary, yet alive.
Poetry isn't end to end fiction. It's a series of moments.
So after a few days with Devotions, I opened Reema Sherin's Strings.
Different weather entirely. Raw, intense, direct.
If Devotions is walk through the jungle, Strings is like sitting beside a campfire on a cold windy night. Sometimes gently warm, sometimes hot enough to sting. But always the kind of heat you know you need.
With Strings I found myself saying "so true", after almost every poem.
Together, these two books turned out to be a perfect starter kit.
One makes you look outward, the other draws you inwards with honesty.
Next on my list is O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency. Let's see whether it takes me further into the jungle or keeps me by the fire.
-- Abhi