Garrison Keillor's "O, What a Luxury" is the rare poetry book that gripped me right through to the end. I got lots of chuckles and smiles. The book's title poem is a celebration of the joy, the pure joy of urination when one is desperate and it is finally ok. Some of the poems celebrate the author's political satisfactions and quite a few are beautifully sexy.
I live in a land of plenty of winter snow and cold. It is 7°F right now with a wind chill of -2 but we expect a temperature of 13° below zero tonight. So the Keillor poems reminding the reader of the advantages of living around here are welcome.
Books of poetry are good for traveling since they can be read in snippets and quick bursts. I don't read much poetry. My favorites are Ogden Nash, Billy Collins and Wislawa Szymborska. Nash gets ignored or sneered at but just reading his titles can put me in a good mood. Szymborska won the Nobel prize for literature with her poetry but is not well-known in the US. She writes in Polish and I have to read her in translation. Imagine trying to translate a world-class poet! Collins was the poet laureate of the US and has read some of his poems to accompanied animated drawings in a fun TED talk.
As an example of the poems in "O, What a Luxury", here is part of a poem called "Case Studies". It relates the uplifting stories of several people who realized the shortcoming, sadness and deprivation they were burden with in New York city and San Francisco. They found genuine happiness in St. Paul:
...
A strict old Presbyterian,
Said, "Why am I so dull?
Why can't one be merry in
One's heart and soul and skull?
Why follow what John Knox taught
That life is a stone wall?
I'd rather do the fox-trot
So I'm heading for St. Paul."
He went to Minnesota
To find out what life means.
Where we all consume our quota
Of cereal and greens.
Goodbye Calvinism,
And minds that are too small.
A brighter day has risen in the city of St. Paul.
...
Keillor, Garrison (2013-10-01). O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound (p. 64). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
