"We live in a world of words and feelings that poems can help us understand.  Poetry captures the most fleeting moments and makes them last forever, or describes the tiniest creature and makes it huge.  Poets express our deepest emotions and ponder life's biggest questions in just a few lines that we can carry with us and bring to mind whenever we need them...." ~ Caroline Kennedy

When we first opened as The Neat Little Bookshop, many will recall that we didn't have a POETRY section.  There were several reasons ~ not least of all, we personally did not have a great interest in poetry.

In 2001 Caroline Kennedy, daughter of Jackie and John, published The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  The book's popularity inspired Caroline to publish in 2005 A Family of Poems.

In the introduction to A Family of Poems she writes, "Some people think poetry is solitary or boring.  They worry that they won't be able to understand it.  But people who start reading poems when they are young don't have these fears.  As children, we enjoy exploring language and rhyme and creating word pictures of the world around us...
"In our family we were encouraged to write or choose a favorite poem for each holiday or birthday as a gift for my mother and grandparents instead of buying a card or present."

[Photo:  a favourite from my files lbw]