Reading in the evening, before bedtime can be both helpful and sleep-damaging, depending on the genre you’re reading and the content of the book you’ve chosen. Reading professional literature can be overwhelming, because that type of books asks for better attention, sharp focus and interest and most of all, a well-rested mind. Since we all know how stressful life is today, reading should be a way to relax and not a way to add up to your tiredness.
That’s why poetry is one of the best choices for the evening reading session; it awakes the most pleasant emotions, it is often based on topics related to love, soothing thoughts, life, nature and animals, friendship or self-consciousness and all of these themes are something that will let you fall asleep in calmness.
Here is our poetry choice (including verse fragments) that you should try reading the next night you feel like you need words that will calm your soul and frequenting mind.
I remember – Anne Sexton
“I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.”
Lady Lazarus – Sylvia Plath
“And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.”
Changing everything – Jane Hirshfield
“There, I said to myself,
that’s done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.”

Since feelings is first – e. e. Cummings
“We are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph…”
The journey – Mary Oliver
“But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
“All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they
took photographs.”

Self-Portrait at 28 – David Berman
”And if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I’d call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn’t mind dying
alone or with you.”

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