Poems for Life: 28 Classic Poems to Live By Taylor Randolph

​Whatever happened to poetry? Of all the literary genres and styles out there, it had to have had the worst evolutionary trajectory. Somehow it devolved from a thing of beauty and elegance, a precise lovely rhyming arrangement of grand sentiments and purpose to meowling, navel-gazing, self-involved stream of consciousness mess.
It went from sweeping to weeping and not even interestingly weeping at that. More like whining. And whatever happened to rhyme? Nowadays, the poets barely utilize rhythm.
In fact, a modern rap song is closer to a poetry ideal of yesteryear than whatever passes for modern poetry. It’s no longer macro, it’s all micro. A list of complaints about societal wrongs, usually the ones specifically pertaining to the poet themselves, in race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
And you can almost forget about how good poetry used to be from reading all this modern crap as I had been, but then you read a collection like this, pure classics, the way poetry had always been intended, to move, delight, AND wow…and you remember.
Rousing isn’t an adjective applicable to modern poetry. It doesn’t even seem to aspire to that.
So, the editor of this compilation had to go back in time to when poetry was grand. The result is…well, grand, Poems to buoy the spirit, to inspire, to lift up. Absolutely lovely. The sort of thing you can go back to over and over again. Poetry, the way it was meant to be. A very enjoyable read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.