“Poetry...

is life distilled.”

A visit to one of our favorite bookstores, The Book Bin, in Salem, found this first poem from Billy Collins:

The Function Of Poetry

I woke up early on a Tuesday,
made a pot of coffee for myself,
then drove down to the village,
stopping at the post office,
then the bank where I cashed a little check from a magazine, and when I got home I read some of the newspaper, starting with the science section, and had another cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal.

Pretty soon, it was lunchtime.
I wasn’t at all hungry,
but I paused for a moment
to look out the big kitchen window,
and that’s when I realized that the function of poetry is to remind me that there is so much more to life than what I am usually doing when I am not reading or writing poetry.