If you’re worried about dwindling interest in poetry, here’s a tactic that may help children come closer to poetry. Grab your kid, turn off the generation-80-Atari, unplug whatever has replaced the typewriter and record player then grab A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children. Reading to children is, of course, a sure way to foster a love of language and literature.

A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children was compiled by Caroline Kennedy. This New York Times Bestseller is a convenient way to introduce children to some of the world’s most renowned poets.

Kennedy separates over 100 poems into seven sections – including my favorite, bedtime poems – to foster children’s imagination and curiosity.

Legendary poets such as Walt Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Wordsworth, Federico García Lorca, Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda are included. One of the most exciting aspects of this book is that translated poems appear in their original language. Reading this book to the child in your life just might change the world.

Photography ("writing with light") is close kin to poetry. Our World with poems by Mary Oliver and photographs by Molly Malone Cook proves that the link is undeniable. This work is a conversation between the two forms, and the two life-companions who produced it.

Our World is more than a collection of images by Mary Oliver's late partner, Mary Malone Cook. It is a brief chronicle of over four decades together and all the astonishing goodness that love engenders. This book of poems and photographs attests to life's unmistakable (but often overlooked) joy as revealed by laughter, glances and personal adventures.

There are some striking photographs of Mary Oliver, which could have only been photographed by someone who truly sees her. But this isn't a who's-who of Provincetown. Lorraine Hansberry, Norman Mailer, and Eleanor Roosevelt appear alongside Mississippi schoolchildren and sailors in France.

This moving portrait of a decades-long love affair with life would look great on a coffee table, but should probably be kept closer at hand.

Okay it's a new year and a lot of people are looking forward to achieving weight-loss goals or moving beyond last year's challenges to embrace this year's opportunities. That's nice. But looking back can give us a great idea of what to expect. And just think of all we can gain by reading the past.

Two poetry anthologies published last year, Best American Poetry 2007 and Best New Poets 2007 can satiate readers starved for poems that aren't self-conscious or too proud.

Best American Poetry 2007, guest edited by Heather McHugh, earns the superlative in its title. Some editors select the most diverse or politically soft poems for anthologies; McHugh shuns second-rate poetry in this collection. Rather than concede to writer's egos or well-connected poets, this anthology contains widely-read and lesser known writers who contribute stinging and stunning voices to U.S. poetry. McHugh's high standards have produced a collection that includes Louise Glück and the Roberts (Creely, Haas, Pinsky).

Best New Poets 2007, guest edited by Natasha Trethewey, introduces fifty emerging poets who have not published a book length of poetry. Most poets included in this edition are MFA candidates, but this isn't your basic workshop poetry. You won't find hackneyed writing polished in form, but retaining the taste of brass. These poems are exciting and reinvigorating – breathing new life in verse.

Anthologies are an easy way to diversify your poetry interests and these books ensure you don't waste any time wincing through mediocre poetry.

Margaret Atwood enjoys worldwide celebrity for her novels’ wry wit and humorous wisdom. Atwood’s poetry encapsulates the creative genius of her novels with the precision good poetry requires. "The Door" is her latest book of poetry. And it is not an ordinary book of poems.

As always, Atwood challenges her audience: to move beyond words, to reconsider their lives, to take notice of the minor and major events that shape us. "Ten O’Clock News" is one of my favorite poems in this work. It is sure to resonate with Washingtonians because it compels news junkies and cultural bystanders to know

What alerts us? What are we feeding on?
We take everything in,
One wound after another.
Rubble rubble, say the guns.
Our faces gleam in the glassy flicker,
The night rises like smoke.

And we, more often than not, "hide our eyes" rather than see the world around us, the actions we put into play and the lives impacted by our passivity.

Don’t worry, Atwood also offers some hilarious takes on high-minded poets and childhood curiosity. Fans of Atwood novels and strangers to this Booker-Prize winning author’s works will not be disappointed in this courageous and insightful portal into the human soul.

Wandering into an intimate English club discussion at Emory University a few winters ago exposed me to one of America’s best poets. Of course, had I not been a hungry college student who spied refreshments, I may never have stumbled upon Natasha Trethewey reading from Bellocq’s Ophelia.

Such unintended moments are the life-blood of poetry. There is little room for heavy-handedness. Overt politics dulls poetry. When done well, poetry can also be political, but e-mail blasts from your party of choice rarely touch your soul. So, Washington politicos – put down the latest poll results and pick-up a book of poetry.

Trethewey’s most recent work, Native Guard, unintentionally jumped off the shelf at me (the book is paperback and I sustained no bruises). Trethewey’s masterful manipulation of memory and uncanny ability to articulate the remembered past is enrapturing. Fortunately, the poems do not leap out at you – they subtly entice you into Trethewey’s cellular memory.

Native Guard, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is a full-body experience. Trethewey understands that there is no point in writing if you are not also committed to writing honestly. She writes the world as she sees and feels it.

Trethewey sifts through memories, studies each minute piece and presents them to the reader without the murkiness that sometimes accompanies poetry.

I highly recommend Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard to people who are timid about poetry. She colors the abstract and voices enduring human longings. For those who have suffered loss and seek recovery, read Native Guard.