Three Poetry Collections to Stir the Soul
No Matter the Weather
Originally published “Three Poetry Collections to Stir the Soul This November” - By Amelie Galbraith KAILON Magazine Vol 1, Issue 1 Fall/Winter ‘24/25
Fall in Tallahassee, Florida often disappoints. This time of year, I dream of vibrant oranges and yellows and reds swirling around me when I walk outside, of taking long walks in the cold—but instead, all I get here is the odd fallen, crusty magnolia leaf crumbling underneath my converse. I ache to feel the world changing around me, but the weighty humidity keeps me stuck in place. I don’t think eighty degree Novembers and relentless sunshine are what the Romantic poets imagined when they wrote about Autumn. While I wish I could wear a cream woolen sweater and drink a hot cup of earl gray while reading Robert Frost, my cheeks flushed like a romantic comedy lead, my autumnal fantasies are never fulfilled. So, I turn to poetry for a sense of change and magic when I’m uninspired by the palm trees and evergreens outside my door.
Here are three poetry collections to stir the soul and open your heart to the world this Autumn—wherever you may be. (Although I seriously envy you, reader, if you are somewhere where the temperature has dared drop below seventy degrees Fahrenheit.)
If solitary walks in nature were enough to inspire Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, who am I to avoid the humid outdoors? Oliver’s verse never fails to fill me with a sense of wonder. Her writing paints the natural world as a gateway to spirituality, illuminating beauty in the most ordinary things. In reading Devotions, I think you’ll discover a golden thread which pulls you from wherever you are sitting into the arms of the nearest oak tree. Look no further than the poem “Loneliness” to be inspired to seek solace in nature:
“I too have known loneliness.
I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.
Oh, motions of tenderness!”
There are few poets that make me feel as connected to the natural world as Mary Oliver, and in the absence of magical seasons, Devotions helps me find magic in the ordinary. Mary Oliver will teach you how to be in awe of the world.
Delightfully introspective, Louise Glück will pull you into winding narratives over fifteen poems in Winter Recipes from the Collective. In her own words, “the book contains / only recipes for winter, when life is hard. In spring, / anyone can make a fine meal.” Across allegorical, and rather mystical, settings and characters, Glück communicates a unique stillness and reflection—reflection I find myself starved of in our whirlwind of a world. Forget long walks in the brisk cold, you need only Winter Recipes to consider the passage of time and change this November.
John Keats is synonymous with an appreciation of autumnal beauty. In the style of the English Romantic poets—which I can feel even in American Mary Oliver’s writing—he evokes a sense of longing and a profound experience of nature. Since I immigrated to the United States from England, Romantic poetry has felt like home to me—the rolling fields, the playful daffodils, the fairy homes in mossy hollows remind me of my childhood in the Southern English countryside. Through poetry, I feel as if I’m returning home. Keats particularly captures the transitory and reflective feel of Autumn, and his verse makes me wonder what it means to leave the Spring of my childhood behind. In these lines from “To Autumn”, he gives the personified season a reminder that I find myself needing at this time of year:
“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too”
Keats reminds us to appreciate the present and find beauty wherever we can.
As the days slip away ever faster, and November too quickly becomes the new year, these collections offer meditations on change and beauty. They urge us to reflect inwards, to discover stillness, to find something beautiful wherever we choose to look. So, whether you’re bracing for the cold or living in a swampy land devoid of seasons at this time of year, I hope poetry can fill your heart with wonder and Autumn spirit.