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Poetry comes to a person from outside, but for it to live, the person must come to it and meet it and complete it. Poetry is new every day because it is seen in different ways by different people. It makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world. The first true encounter with poetry should be simple and should involve allowing oneself to think and to feel. Part of the spell of poetry is the rhythm of the language. Almost anything put into rhythm and rhyme is more memorable than the same thing said in prose. Writing poetry is a lot like a contest with oneself. Some of the best fun is making up limericks. When the rhymes "pay off," they give a sense of completion and inevitability that is so deliciously memorable that there is nothing else like it. The deeper the encounter wth poetry, the deeper will be the experience of life. Connections between things will exist in ways that they never did before. (DC)

A classic is a book that gives the exhilarating feeling that a part of life finally has been uncovered. It is a book that has stood the test of time, that people keep reaching for throughout the ages for its special enlightenment. Here are some suggestions to help open up the world of the classics: (1) know if what is being read is a novel, a drama, a biography, or a history; (2) don't read in bed (classics can be tough going); (3) don't be thrown by a lot of characters; (4) give the author a chance and don't give up on the book too soon; (5) read in big bites; (6) read what the author read; (7) read about the author's time; (8) read about the author's life; and (9) read the book again. The following are a few classics worth trying: Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey"; Rabelais's"Gargantua and Pantagruel"; Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"; Cervantes's "Don Quixote"; Shakespeare's plays, especially "Hamlet,""Macbeth," and "Romeo and Juliet"; Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers"; and Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." (DC)