Mockingbird Hill Cottage

First things first: I keep forgetting to reveal the winner of the book giveaway. It’s Melanie! Melanie, I’ll send you an email. Let me know your mailing address and I’ll pass it along to TLC Book Tours.

We’re headed to 55 degrees today. I think we’ll take a little drive this afternoon. Yesterday, I walked up and down the driveway several times and, though it was breezy, the warmer air felt so good!

I want to share a wonderful book that both Don and I are enjoying. I first heard about these books from Miranda Mills last year and I meant to order a copy at the time but somehow didn’t get to it until recently. It’s a book by William Sieghart called The Poetry Pharmacy; Tried-And-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul.

I’m going to add the description from Penguin Books:

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization – I’m not the only one who feels like this.

In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is something here to ease your pain.

The book is truly wonderful. Most mornings, during our second cup of coffee, we will try to track our mood of late and look for something in the book that might reference that. In this first volume there are sections for Mental and Emotional Wellbeing, Motivations, Self-Image and Self-Acceptance, The World and Other People, and Love and Loss. Within each section are subsections like News Overload, or Fear of the Other, or Regret.

Sieghart writes a brief little essay on the subject and the poem he’s chosen and the poem is on the facing page.

We love this because we are exposed to poets we might not encounter otherwise and Sieghart’s writing is lovely. There is a comfort in knowing others have felt that same emotion and not only have they felt it, but they’ve written about it in a poem.

This has become one of our treasured morning rituals. In addition to the volume pictured, there’s another volume, The Poetry Pharmacy Returns, and we’re going to order that as well.

I know many people who routinely read poetry. Aside from Shakespeare and Mary Oliver, I don’t. It’s not that I’m averse to it, I just tend to stick with fiction and nonfiction. This book broadens my poetry horizons and that’s a good thing.

Still reading A Chelsea Concerto, about London during the Blitz. It’s beautifully written.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.