Lifelines 3, Edited by Niall MacMonagle, Town House, 291pp, £10.99
Then read from the treasured volume/The poem of thy choice. Longfellow's words aptly describe Lifelines 3 (in which they appear), the final volume of "letters from famous people about their favourite poems".
The brain-child of Niall MacMonagle, an English teacher at Wesley College, the project began in 1985 in the form of a booklet compiled by his students which was sold in aid of Ethiopian relief. Instant success encouraged more booklets over the years which became in 1992 a collection introduced by Seamus Heaney and featuring such diverse names as Mother Teresa, Darina Allen, Glenda Jackson and Margaret Atwood. A best-seller with royalties donated to Concern, it was followed by a second equally successful volume introduced by Paul Durcan and including the likes of Neil Jordan, Vikram Seth and Allen Ginsberg.
The appeal of Lifelines lies in the mixture of personal exposure with poetic transcendence. What could be more intimate than poetry and more revealing than your heart's choice of poem? By generously baring their souls, the contributors testify to the power of poetry to affect people's lives, to assuage grief, to cheer, to name pain, to initiate change, to celebrate, to encourage, to express the inexpressible.
The usual great poets are present in abundance, with Yeats in first place followed by Heaney and Kavanagh. Elisabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson establish a quiet presence of their own, while rarer blooms burst forth here and there - pieces from Rumi, a poem from Japan, another from India, a few in Irish. It is often the "humbler poets" who provide the moments of shock and pleasure, in part because their voices are unpredictable.
Particular items present their own charm. Chef and restaurateur Myrtle Allen, after declaring that poetry wasn't a part of her busy life, admits to picking produce from garden and stream, dwelling upon "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". Tony Blair, not yet PM, with Rupert Brook's The Soldier, couldn't have waved a flag better, short of God Save The Queen. Roddy Doyle describes how Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon, an Inter Cert poem, "hit me between the eyes. Almost smashed my glasses."
As only Americans can, Tony Kushner cuts to the bone with an extraordinary letter about mother/ son relationships to accompany an equally extraordinary poem, My Mother Would be A Falconress by Robert Duncan. Barry Castle proffers the most pithy letter in a line: "I am not attracted to gloom but Stevie Smith's seeming artlessness beguiles me into following her down her paths of deprivation and loneliness." This is the unique experience of Lifelines, you cannot know what you will encounter next - a sudden confession, a breathtaking image, an inspiring anecdote, a belly laugh, a tear.
Recurring motifs among the letter-writers are fascinating in themselves: the number of poets who misread the invitation and sent in a sample of their own work; the number of people who expressed distress at being forced to choose; the number who felt compelled to insist that the stated favourite was only one of many and not to be viewed as a permanent choice; the number who apologised for the lack of greatness of their poet; the number who worried that their choice might already be taken; and the number who actually chose the same unlikely piece.
And while the odd overweening ego flares up like a rash, it is an occasional occurrence.
Conventional wisdom would have it that the poetic art is esoteric yet three volumes of Lifelines would seem to say otherwise. Indeed, they confirm an unconscious truth which some nations such as India, Ireland and Russia hold to be self-evident: we cannot live without poetry.
G.V. Whelan is an Irish-Canadian novelist, screenwriter and critic.