Anthology: Poems on How to Live

An episode from 1/26/23: Tonight I read a handful of poems on the theme of How to live, what to do? How to get by in the world as a devotee of culture, solitude, ritual, beauty, tradition and individuality?

There is of course no one answer, and anyway, poetry should stay as far away from direct “advice,” or proscription of any kind. Still, when I sit back and think about the kind of poems that help me through the day – and the months, and the years – these are some of them:

• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), How to Live What to Do
• Galway Kinnell (1927-2014), Tillamook Journal
• Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), Things That Matter
• Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), #2 from Lightenings
• Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), Joy
• Louise Glück (1943-), Summer Night
• W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), A Prayer on Going into My House
• Emily Brontë (1818-1848), “Often rebuked, yet always back returning”
• Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Man

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Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].