"Poetry Makes Nothing Happen"

My first thought after reading the poem is that it is loaded. It is full of different stories that poetry had something to do with. There are many stories with different people involved. In the first 5 lines of the poem we hear about a man names Mike Holmquist who stays awake on his drive home by listening to the radio in his car, music I'm assuming, with is a form of poetry. This makes it possible for him to get home safely, it is what gets him through his drive home. Lines 5-10 tell us a story of a woman names May Quinn. Her husband must be sick, because he has many medications in their medicine cabinet. May Quinn I think is a woman who is sad, depressed, and has thoughts of hurting herself. She is home and in the bathroom when she thinks of taking her husbands medicine from the cabinet. Instead, she picks up a book and fell asleep reading it. It was a book of poetry, that she found refuge in that night. That night, the book stopped her from ending her life. Lines 10-15 tell us a story of Jenny Klein who was busy writing a paper on a Bishop poem one afternoon. She missed her ride because she hadn't finished. After finishing her paper, she was in a better state of mind than she had been before. When she arrived home she got news of a cancer diagnosis. She handled it much better than she would have, after writing the paper over a Bishop poem. Lines 15-20 tell us about a father who was at home with his little girl, Naomi Stella. They were in the living room together when the news gave report of troops dropping down in Afghanistan, war. Naomi's father quickly turned on a nursery rhyme for her, to distract her while he soaked in what was going on. Lines 20-30 then go on to name more people, Faith Chaney, Lulu Perez, Sunghee Chen, who I assume all have stories like those people named earlier in the poem. The author is saying that everyone says that poetry has done nothing for them, but in reality poetry is everywhere around us. At one point or another poetry has gotten us through something, or made a bad situation a little more manageable.

These things all matter because no matter how small it is, even so small that we don't notice, poetry has probably gotten us all through something in our life. Poetry comes in so many forms, nursery rhymes, music, books, religion, these are all examples. It means that maybe we should pay more attention to those little things around us, and realize that they do make our lives easier sometimes, and that maybe we can find refuge in things like that if we just realize that they are there and what they do for us.