Some, perhaps, will love this approach to poetry; they will find the personal content generous, and humbly naked. They will find the sharing of painful personal experiences, and life changing moments, which these two editors share plentifully, disarming. Perhaps some readers will feel the poetry is demystified by this long, personal confidence. Perhaps some readers will see poetry go from an intimidating behemoth to a friend open to chat. But for me, poetry was already a friend, one I wished to stroll alone with. A guide - which to me is what an editor is - should point a salient feature upcoming here and there, but then stand back and let the pilgrim make their own journey. The orchestra director does not sing in the opera, rather facilitates its beauty. A novelist does not insert his autobiography between the covers, alongside the pages of his novel.
At one point, for example, Mr. Reynard writes that he is rather shy in life, and does not take best to publicly recited prayer. He writes he prefers the meditative to the rote, as well. These admissions seem incongruous with the heft of so much private detail into this volume - into what should for the reader be an invitation to a banquet, a plate set before the stranger with which to take, and nourish themselves. Instead it feels as if these poems have had a bite taken out of them before the reader is invited to sit. These twenty poems are arranged before the reader, a promise implied they will bear fruit in the nourishment of one’s soul. The problem is not the poems themselves (which I leave for the reader to discover of their own will), but the courses between. Words like mindfulness, prayer, soul, are mentioned in Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul, but the main impression I was left with was a very private love story begging to be told. It should be. But not here.
This volume perhaps would have been more appropriately titled, “Twenty Poems That Nourished Our Souls.” And then I would have walked through the book’s pages with the two lovers and listened to their tale. But this was their tale. It is their story. I felt as if I was eavesdropping. For me, poetry is a meditation. It can be practiced anywhere but not equally well. For me, the best host is one who invites, smiles, and disappears to leave the guest to wander. The best soundtrack is the one nature provides although no one seems to be conducting. The best poetry volumes invite one in and stand waiting, trusting the reader to bring the rest. So I can only give this particular volume a mixed review, for the sense of intrusion and chatter I experienced there.
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