Thursday, June 4, 2026
As a college student, I admired poets and those who enjoyed reading poems, but rarely did I read poetry myself. Later in life, my younger daughter, Zoon gifted me Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things. I read and reread the poems, and loved each one of those jewels, simple yet stunning.
To understand the structure and methods of writing poetry, I read Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry and Molly Peacock’s How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle. Several years went by without my reading another poem. Writing one had not even occurred to me.
Between 2007-2011 my website blogs were commentaries on several sacred text, all written in verse including Taoist, Tao-te Ching, Buddhist Dhammapada and Hindu Bhagavad Gita. Each week I copied one chapter from one sacred book from beginning to the end. I continued it with a commentary and the lessons I learned. After about four years of this writing exercise, I realized I had unwittingly practiced poetic forms by reading, reciting, and copying. In appreciating the verses I not only learned spiritual lessons but also intuitively absorbed the essence of poetry.
More books and several years later I made my first attempts to write poetry, of which fifteen poems are included in Kathleen Shoop and Lori M. Jones’s book, Writing Inspiration Through Mindful Walking. Finally, when the poet Gale Oare started Mindful Poets Group I began to submit poems for our monthly meet-and-critique sessions. So far I have submitted about fifty poems.
In the 1980s I loved watching the Chinese cooking show called Yan Can Cook. It’s host Martin Yan used to say, “Remember, if Yan can cook, so can you.” To echo his encouraging remark I say to you, “Remember, if Madhu can write poetry, you can too.
Let’s begin celebrating the month we started to write poetry by reading William Wordsworth’s poem, I wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
