I recently started reading poetry, by chance of discovering a small, specialist poetry library near my office. It's been really enriching, and I've felt my appreciation and the enjoyment for poetry grow exponentially after I let go and stopped trying too hard. It used to always seem to be impenatrable to me, until I just accepted that some things would resonate with me and others weren't and not even everything by a specific poet would. But it's low commitment to give things a go.

I've mainly been astounded by something that, when I say it out loud seems obvious: everything I've felt, good and bad, has been felt by countless others and that's only counting those who wrote poems about it. And it stretches across at least as long as written history does. There's comfort in that alone for me.

My journey was similar. After walking through enough art museums and realizing that I only really engaged with and was moved by a few pieces and it was still worth it, I was able to read books of poetry much more calmly.

I thought this was good :)

I stood on the porch tonight— which way do we

face to talk to the dead? I thought of the

new rose, and went out over the

grey lawn— things really

have no color at night. I descended

the stone steps, as if to the place where one

speaks to the dead. The rose stood

half-uncurled, glowing white in the

black air. Later I remembered

your birthday. You would have been ninety and getting

roses from me. Are the dead there

if we do not speak to them? When I came to see you

you were always sitting quietly in the chair,

not knitting, because of the arthritis,

not reading, because of the blindness,

just sitting. I never knew how you

did it or what you were thinking. Now I

sometimes sit on the porch, waiting,

trying to feel you there like the color of the

flowers in the dark

I thought that “which way do we face to talk to the dead?” is the material of masterpiece. An innocent question with many answers, one for every reader or maybe, one for every reader’s dead.

The potential to get wrecked by something like this on a Sunday morning in the midst of things like "google maps is broken" and "check out this cool thing I made" is what makes hacker news a special place.