1 . Family: Poems — by Mr. Keith Keenan

Kindle $0.00; Hardcover $12.50; Paperback $7.00.

The poet describes personal thoughts and feelings in a lyrical journey to understand and celebrate his family. “Family” looks at living honestly in places, not illusions. Figurative (形象的) language, a love of metaphor and sharp images all make the poems work.

Time to Heal — by Aleandra Vasiliu

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $21.94; Paperback $12.64.

From the bestselling author comes an inspirational poetry book about love, healing, and growth. It is a reminder to strive to change for the better. Featuring more than 130 uplifting poems and black-and-white illustrations, it’s a great companion when you need to embrace self-love and personal transformation.

Seeds from a Birch Tree — by Clark Strand

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $26.80; Paperback $16.95.

Seeds from a Birch Tree makes nature into a spiritual path. Its message was simple: Haiku teaches us to return to nature by following the seasons — seventeen syllables at a time. With its mix of poetry and memoir (回忆录), the book guides us to the joy hidden in plain sight, leading us to get into a good state of body and mind.

A Poem for Every Day — by Allie Esiri

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $28.05; Audio CD $18.05.

This audio book is a collection of 366 poems which link to events on key dates—funny for April Fools’ Day, festive for Christmas. This is the perfect gift for poetry lovers of all ages. These poems are informative, peaceful, and energetic!

There are a large number of poetry collections on Amazon. More information, please click here.

2 . Two hundred years ago the English poet William Wordsworth wrote I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, a poem that was _______ when he came across a field of daffodils (水仙花). It expresses a basic spirit of early English Romanticism.

What makes this poem a (n) _______ of Romantic thinking? It isn’t that Wordsworth chooses to write about a natural _______: it is the way he describes the scene as if it had human _______. For him, _______ is not only a neutral (无感情色彩的) mixture of scenery, colors, plants, rocks, soil, water and air. It is a living force that feels joy and sadness and even tries to _______ us human beings and show us the beauty of life.

Wordsworth’s home is now one of the most popular _______ in the Lake District. You can go on a tour of the garden where wild flowers still survive now regardless of the change of the _______. The place, where Wordsworth saw the daffodils, is at the southernmost end of the lake. When you are walking in the _______ of William from two centuries ago, the first group of daffodils ________, but they aren’t tall yellow trumpets (小号状的花) proudly swinging in the gentle wind as ________ in Wordsworth’s poem. They are just tiny wild daffodils grouped around individual trees rather than ________ together. But as you look north, from beside a huge ancient oak tree, you ________ this is what delighted Wordsworth; group after group of daffodils, spread out to left and right but coming together in your ________ so that they form a beautiful, pale yellow carpet. What you’re seeing at last is nature transformed by human sight and ________.

The reasons why people write poetry are different and poets use many different forms of poetry to express     1     (them).

Some of     2     first poems a young child learns in English are nursery rhymes, which are usually the     3     (tradition) poems or folk songs. They have a strong rhythm and a lot of repetition. Despite the fact that some of them may not make sense and even seem contradictory, they are easy to learn and recite. List     4     (poem), one of the simplest kinds of poem, have a flexible line length and     5     (repeat) phrases which give both a pattern and a rhythm to the poem. Another simple form of poem is the cinquain,     6     is made up of five lines. This kind of poem can convey a strong picture in just a few words. Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that consists     7     17 syllables and     8     (be) very popular with English writers. It is easy to write. English speakers like Tang poetry in particular. A lot of Tang poetry     9     (translate) into English already. With so many different forms of poetry     10     (choose) from, why not have a try and write poems of your own?

When a thought has found words

Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered to be out of date and have little to do with the life of today’s students.

However, compared with the situation in the West, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum (课程) in China. Recently, the Ministry of Education has increased the number of ancient Chinese poems for students to memorize and recite, from 14 to 72. Why is it important to learn poems?

First of all, poetry is a necessary part of learning traditional Chinese culture. It is a path to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and feelings that are common to everyone but that we may be unable to express, the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those feelings into words and bring us self-understanding.

Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something common can become beautiful. Here is a poem called Fog by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes/on silent haunches (弓腰) /and then moves on. Yes, a fog does move smoothly, silently and like a cat, and Sandberg catches that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.

Of course, to really enjoy poetry, it has to be read aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poems, like Homer’s Epics (《荷马史诗》) and China’s Book of Songs, were spoken for hundreds of years before they were written.

The American poet Robert Frost said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

9 . Looking for a new poetry book to read? I’ve got you! We’re going to explore some of my favorite poetry collections, which range from the traditional all the way to the totally experimental. And though they differ in terms of tone and subject matter, they’ve got all we call “good parts”.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

It is the first poetry collection from Ocean Vuong. Vuong’s style is well-suited to the heavy subjects he pursues, particularly when he reflects on the loss of his father and his experiences as a wartime refugee. There’s a certain wonderful quality to his writing.

Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara

If you like a conversational style, Lunch Poems might be the poetry book for you. Personal, funny, and easy, the collection perfectly shows the casual voice of Frank O’Hara, an outstanding figure of the New School Movement in late 1950s’ New York. As the name suggests, most of the poems were written during his lunch break at work, bringing a realistic image by the writing.

100 Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings

It’s a shame that more people don’t take EE Cummings seriously. Yes, his poetry is sometimes experimental. Unconcerned with “rules”, Cummings tried to capture emotion in its own form.

The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop

In my opinion, any kind of fantastic poetry books must include Elizabeth Bishop. Highly skilled and highly influential, Bishop was one of the most powerful voices of the 20th century. She mostly worked within traditional forms, but the forms led to surprising effects, mixing classic styles with modern ones.

10 . No poem should ever be discussed or “analyzed”, until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling “interpretation” of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching cannot replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than “analyzing” it, if there isn’t time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is “a criticism of life” “a heightening of life, enjoyment with others”. It is “an approach to the truth of feeling”, and it “can save your life”. It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don’t like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.