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By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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Given my obsession with all things literary, perhaps I should be able to write it.

But poetry only ever occurs to me in randomly scattered puzzle pieces I cannot quite intuit how to interlock.

Take last Sunday morning when I lingered a little too late in bed savoring a rare moment of quiet broken only by the sounds of bird-song and my own breathing.

Gosh, I think, "bird-song and my own breathing." That has a nice alliterative ring. I should somehow work it into a poem. But along with what else? For the life of me, I cannot think of a single other complementary line.

Accustomed to tracing my thoughts against the linear patterns of prose, my words make no sense at all in a medium that is as much about sound itself as sounding logical.

Or maybe the problem is I do not have a strong enough vocabulary. While poetry may free writers from all the usual rules of grammar and punctuation, maintaining its rhythm and meter requires words chosen with the utmost precision and care. They do not necessarily have to rhyme but they have to sound right in relation to one another.

Supposing I could find a consistent cadence in my contemplative moment, I would also need a reason for calling your attention to it. I would have to make it as revelatory to you as it is to me, to translate it from personal epiphany into universal truth. It would be of no use to you if it could not at once increase your self-awareness and startle you out of yourself altogether.

Above all, it would have to be something you could draw comfort from at those inevitable times when even bird-song is too much to bear.

Garrison Keillor has assembled 185 examples of verse that more than meet this stringent criteria in his latest anthology of poems featured on his daily five-minute public radio program The Writer's Almanac. A companion to the critically acclaimed Good Poems (Viking, 2002, $25.95), it is similarly named Good Poems for Hard Times (Viking, 2005, $25.95).

(In addition to having authored 16 books, does anyone not know Keillor hosts the popular public radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion?)

Both poetry compilations have the same basic structure. Each begins with an introduction by Keillor as thoughtfully composed as the most intricate sonnet. Then comes the poetry divided into various thematic categories. That in turn is followed by a biographical section that provides about a paragraph of information on each of the contributing poets.

But, as the new volume's title forewarns, Keillor's introduction for it is decidedly darker in tone than the one for its predecessor.

Keillor's main objective in the first volume is to tempt more people to consider reading poetry. Like the mother who must use all her wiles to woo her resistant infant son into eating his peas, Keillor uses every trick he knows to entice his skeptical audience to try just one bite of this form of storytelling that can "surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar."

Poetry is as relevant to our everyday existence as any other kind of creative writing, he convincingly argues.

But in the second volume, as though he had recently tangled with a mob of surly teenagers, Keillor is fed up with having to defend the much maligned and marginalized genre. In fact, the self-professed "homegrown Democrat" sounds fed up with pretty much everything.

"America is in hard times these days," he observes, "the beloved country awash to the scuppers in expensive trash, gripped by persistent jitters, politics even more divorced from reality than usual, the levers of power firmly in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicism is stunning, especially their perversion of the gospel of the Lord to blast the poor and the meek and subvert the tax system in favor of the rich…"

Wow! Do you think he may have written that the day after our current president was re-elected and the civil war of words between red states and blue began?

Suddenly poetry to Keillor is not just "a necessity as simple as the need to be touched," it is "the truest form of journalism we have." It is "the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart."

"All that your life can be," he contends, "lived bravely and independently, you can discover in poetry."

Whether or not you share Keillor's political views, you will have no trouble seconding that last statement after reading just a few of the exquisitely crafted poems he has selected to prove his point. And, you will agree wholeheartedly with him that poetry is the perfect panacea for any manifestation of pain.

That said, the most striking characteristic of this collection is not the poetry itself but the way Keillor arranges it. Eschewing the easily recognizable subject headings (love and marriage, friendship and family, work, death, etc.) he uses in his first anthology, he groups poems in the companion according to a phrase from one of them that could apply to all of them. And, of course, the only way to find out where the phrase is from or what it signifies is to read every poem in a given group.

Keillor stresses in his introduction, "A poem is not a puzzle that you the dutiful reader is obliged to solve." Nevertheless, he sends us on a scavenger hunt for the specific insight we want or need. As is his editorial privilege, Keillor insists we hear not just the stories the poems tell individually but the ones they tell collectively when stitched together into the same patchwork quilt.

Therefore, if you want to receive the full benefits of this particular remedy for whatever ails you, you really do need to read it like you would a novel, from beginning to middle to end.

Trust me, they are all included — the verses to help you cope with death and dying, losing or surviving your job, the ups and downs of romantic love, frustration over futile fighting in foreign lands, your ever-shrinking bank account or the realization you are no better at writing poetry than you are at making piecrust. Just don't expect to encounter them in obvious places.

Reading the poems in the order Keillor intends will also make you more appreciative of his knack for seamlessly blending classic and contemporary voices. On the topic of heroism, only Keillor can get away with following the formal "To fight aloud, is very brave" by the universally known 19th century poet Emily Dickinson with the utterly unconventional "Analysis of Baseball" by relatively unknown 20th century poet May Swenson.

If you do not have time for the entire book, at least read X.J. Kennedy's "September Twelfth, 2001." In three succinct stanzas he beautifully captures the conflicting emotions we all felt in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, "we bubbles rising and bursting in a boiling pot."

And, as my own brain continues to go blank whenever my musings demand lyrical transcription, the selection to which I can best relate is W.S. Merwin's "Just Now"
In the morning as the storm begins to blow away

the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me

that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe

simpler than I could have begun to find words for…

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She is the librarian at the Genesee District Library's Goodrich Branch.

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