As well as reading and writing poetry I sometime find a terrific reference book that reminds me about how to read and think through poetry. I always find it stimulating to go back to analysis and think it through then try to apply it to other work I love. The most recent book was only published last year 2015 and is by a fabulous poet in her own right as well as being a master of analysis that doesn't feel invasive, or corrosive . By that I mean it doesn't make you hate that you are reading about the meaning of said words... you are part of the process and it is exciting to think about words and how they are, have, and will continue to elaborate all the things we cannot know for certain.

"Ten Windows How Great Poems Transform the World", by Jane Hirshfield

I have been journalling about windows and photos and Hirshfield writes this about windows and poems....

"Many good poems have a kind of window moment in them---- they change their direction of gaze in a way that suddenly opens a broader landscape of meaning and feeling. Encountering such a moment, the reader breathes in some new infusion, as steeply perceptible as any physical window's increase of light, scent,or air. The gesture is one of lifting, unlatching, releasing; mind and attention swing open to new-peeled vistas."

The pleasure of reading this book is about learning better how to see the poem. NOW I will have to put my brain to work to see if anything new finds its way into language. But I leave you with this.

Basho perhaps the greatest write of haiku wrote in one of his travel journals:

roadside-skeleton-thoughts
wind penetrates
through to the heart