of poems and pecan pie

I have been reading poetry in miniature snatches of redeemed time, akin to the way I eat pecan pie: one rich bite at a time consumed while washing piles of Thanksgiving Dinner dishes. Too much at once would be overload. I prefer to chew my pecan pie while thinking deep thoughts and holding a dish towel. It keeps me grounded.
Hands down, the best poetry there is? The Bible. Second to that is everything else. Okay, I'll admit I've been reading everything else this week.
Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times is an anthology of 185 poems selected from NPR's Writer's Almanac, 179 of which I heartily recommend. You have to read them yourselves to determine which 6 left a bad taste in my mouth.
Here is an excerpt form Garrison's intro:

"People complain about the obscurity of poetry, especially if they're assigned to write about it, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation with people you don't know well which tends to be jumpy repartee, crooked, coded, allusive to no effect, firmly repressed, locked up in irony, steadfastly refusing to share genuine experience -think of conversation at office parties or conversation between teenage children and parents, or between men, or between bitter spouses: rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn't matter -
poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. All that I wrote about it as a grad student I hereby recant and abjure -all that matters about poetry to me now is directness and clarity and truthfulness. All that is twittry and lit'ry: no thanks, pal. A person could perish of entertainment, especially comedy, so much of it casually nihilistic, hateful, glittering, and in the end clueless. People in nursing homes die watching late-night television, and if I were one of them, I'd be grateful when the darkness descends. Thank God if the pastor comes and offers a psalm and a prayer, and they can attain a glimmer of clarity at the end."

Honestly, the introduction alone is worth the price of this book. If you are hard up for cash (a situation not uncommon among poets themselves), you could borrow it from the Potsdam Library and then tack it onto your Christmas Wish List. Which is what I'm doing.
Keillor's insightful rant brought me the resolve to offer something from the heart more often. I aspire to reflect the quality of people I keep around, and the redeeemable stuff of which they are made.