I am not a poetry person -- and I know how obnoxious that sounds. I hate hearing other people talk about how they can't read poetry, even though I totally agree with them and struggle with all the usual complaints. It's not that I struggle with reading verse; I had to memorize and recite enough poems in English and drama classes in school to handle that. My problem is that I feel obligated to read slowly and deliberately and dig some kind of symbolism and secret meaning out of every phrase, and then at the end of the poem, I have to really feel something profound or the experience has been a failure.

The Dream of a Common Language has really helped me get over these hang-ups; I am not suddenly going to read tons of poetry, but it was the right book at the right time to make me realize what I am probably missing. It is so much more modern (not Modern) than any other poetry I've read. The poems are all very intimate and personal and yet somehow manage to express something emblematically feminine and deeply universal, which is what poetry tries to achieve, I think. And yet it still comes across so organically and easily, as if, for Adrienne Rich at least, writing poetry is the easiest thing in the world.

If the name sounds familiar, it's because The Dream of a Common Language is on the list of books Cheryl Strayed read while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, detailed in her memoir Wild, which I have already strongly recommended. I took Strayed's love of the book seriously and it seemed as good a place as any to start with reading poetry for pleasure. I especially liked how I found myself searching for Strayed in the book, and having read Wild really enhanced my experience.