On the Bedside Table

When I was young, I heard Ray Bradbury speak at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, and he advised the aspiring fiction writers in the audience to read poetry. I, personally, had always read it. I had loved it since childhood, but after hearing Bradbury speak I started keeping books of poetry on my nightstand to read before bed so the language could dance in my head while I slept. This habit has not changed in twenty years.

Over the last year or so, works by Christian Wiman, Les Murray, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Fred Chappell have found their way to my bedside table. Last week I read work by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, and I was struck by the poem entitled "I May Reap," where Kavanagh writes: " I WHO have not sown, / I too / By God's grace may come to harvest." I understand this sentiment, and Kavanagh, through the power of poetry, makes me feel as if he were a close friend right here with me, though he died before I was born and lived a full ocean away.