Stefanie had a great post recently on creating a personal poetry anthology and oh the memories this brought because I used to collect poems all the time. I’d find a poem in a magazine or book and I’d write it out or make a photocopy of it and stash it away to go back to read time and again.
I haven’t done this in years but I love this idea because I want to be able to go back to those poems that meant something to me. Whether I treasured the poem because a friend shared it with me or because I had just discovered a new poet, my anthology was the poetry journal I could go to at any time and know that I’d find a poem I needed to read for whatever mood.
I think the reason I haven’t done this in so long is really because of my blog. I tend to mention poems here and there but it would be nice to start collecting them again.
I’d like to take this up again but with some adjustments. I never recorded where I first read/heard the poem, or who shared it with me. I think it would be interesting to keep track of that sort of thing. I won’t be doing any poetry analysis because well I don’t really know how but I wouldn’t mind writing down a couple of words on why this poem meant something to me. Essentially, this collection becoming another journal.
In case you were wondering, in this little journal I had some poetry by Pablo Neruda, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Dorothy Parker, and Rainer Maria Rilke to name a few.
So I’ll keep you posted. I’ll try to do a check in on my poetry anthology in the next few months and we’ll see how it’s going. How about you, do you do something like this too? Any ideas or recommendations? Or have you read a good poem recently that you think I should include in my journal?
Yay for personal poetry anthologies! I make note of the title of the book or magazine I got the poem from and then write the day I entered it in the journal. I wanted to keep it simple. This might change later, but for now, it has been working for me.
I used to do this with quotes, but it’s been many years since I last thought of it. Your post reminded me. I think I still have one of those old journals somewhere.
Your idea sounds good and I look forward to following your progress!
Nice! I have never been very good about writing down quotes or poems. I always make it a goal for a new year, but never happens…
I actually do something similar! 🙂 I used to type the poems up and put them in a binder. That way if I wanted to include them in my art journal, I can just make a copy and add it. Now I type up poems and just add them to my journal.
I actually have a ton of great poems on my blog. You can just type in “poetry” and they’ll all come up. 🙂
This is a fantastic idea! When things settle down for me work/home-wise, I’ll have to give this some thought for myself.
I think I use my blog more for things like this, too, but I love the idea. I have been using notebooks this year, though, to keep notes on the books I am currently reading–to help keep everything straight when I go back to write about them later.