Have you read Jane Miller’s new book yet?
From the Valley of Bronze Camels was recently published by the University of Michigan Press.
It’s the latest title in the Poets on Poetry Series, which has been up and running since Donald Hall founded it in the late 1970s.
That’s quite a run for an art form that’s routinely being carted off to the morgue (and yet keeps insisting, for all you Monty Python fans, “I’m not dead”).
Jane’s book is a spectacular addition — for readers of all stripes.
Why?
Simply put, as my colleagues at the press write: “Jane Miller loves poetry.”
And when someone loves something as deeply as this, it often means that tuning in will be a revelation.
Because their insights and enthusiasm are going to get us thinking about the world, about others, and about ourselves in new and profoundly engaging ways.
That’s the thing about literature and the arts.
They push at our perceptions, giving us a chance to challenge — and equally to affirm — who we are and what we stand for.
Is Jane’s book going to teach you how to time the market, launch that podcast you’ve been thinking about, or give you the inside track on content marketing?
Not on the surface, no. Or at least not in the ways you’d expect.
But that’s the whole point of reading outside the bestseller lists in your field.
It gives you a chance to explore — to enlarge your perspective, deepen your empathy, and kindle and rekindle your creativity.
Which is another way of saying it promotes innovation and allows you to do what you do even better.
And that’s how connection happens.
Not by hooking anyone.
But by listening to them.
By being genuinely interested in who they are and the stories they have to tell. Not to sell them something. But to share how your experience can help them.
And to affirm how their experience has helped you.
