Jean de La Fontaine published “The Oak and the Reed” in the first of his twelve books of fables. Published in 1688, the fable is adapted from Aesop’s Fables and is written in poetic meter and rhyme in French. La Fontaine’s adaptation is not unique: the tale has been retold in Greek, Latin, Italian and English and has even been interpreted in statue and song. Why do you think this story is so inspiring, across cultures and generations?
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The headline is stark: Americans are increasingly unlikely to read literature. So found the National Endowment for the Arts in its recently released Annual Arts Basic Survey (AABS). Measuring the ways adult Americans interact with and engage in the arts – from reading a book to playing an instrument to attending a performance – this year’s survey shows that only 43% of Americans read “novels, short stories, or plays not required for work or school.” Although the NEA’s research excludes narrative non-fiction and newer storytelling genres like blog posts and podcasts, the research suggests that reading rigorous literature may shrink away to nothing, with fewer and fewer Americans taking the time to explore the magic of literary worlds. But the NEA’s numbers are particularly striking as they break down along gender, race and educational lines.
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Should companies help their employees learn? A recent article for the Harvard Business Review argues for lifelong learning in the workplace and offers three tips for cultivating it. We have this, as well as essays on meaningful work, book deserts, storytelling and literary quizzes in our most recent Weekend Reading.
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The past few weeks have offered us a lot to think about, including essays on how supporting parents helps foster noncognitive skills in young children, what makes work meaningful, and the power of poetry and listening. We’ve also included an essay on LeBron James and Homeric epic and a few unusual facts about reading.
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April in the United States is National Poetry Month, and so it seems appropriate, as we read mindfully once again, to turn to a poet whose work emphasizes the relationship between the natural world and our deepest selves. A fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and winner of the National Humanities Medal, Wendell Berry is a prolific writer of prose—fiction and nonfiction—and poetry.
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In January, we experimented with something new. We at Books@Work and a number of volunteers who subscribed for this special series undertook to read a story, an essay or a poem every day for about three weeks. Intended as a springboard to think about mindfulness and to practice compassion, empathy and awareness (of ourselves and of the world we live in) the readings enabled—if nothing else—a few quiet minutes in the day to focus on something different, something literary or artful. Reading mindfully, we hypothesized, might be a way to decompress and engage our minds, with thought and deliberation. Here are our observations, plus a sampling of what we read.
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In cultivating compassion, empathy and an appreciation for the world, mindfulness practice powerfully overlaps with the benefits of reading. After all, a New School Study recently demonstrated that reading – especially literary fiction – makes readers more empathetic. Reading deeply requires for a moment that we enter into another person’s head, and when we read fiction we enter the minds of characters who are often vastly different from ourselves. Learning about another’s perspective or point of view has the potential to profoundly shape us and our interactions with the world. Reading, in this sense, is an opportunity to practice deep and compassionate listening.
We are so convinced of the parallels between reading and sharing a great text and mindfulness practice, that we invite you to share an experiment with us. Participating in a mindfulness seminar or meditating every morning are not the only ways to focus on the moment, engage in compassion and connect with the beauty of the world. You can also read – and you can read with us.
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Professor Michelle Rankins led a lunchtime seminar on two poems by Maya Angelou during the first Cleveland Single Moms Conference in October. The group read “Phenomenal Woman” in unison, forceful and strong voices booming through the open air of the Cleveland Galleria. The Single Moms Conference offered Books@Work the chance to reach readers who might feel isolated. “When I read it, it made me think that beauty is internal,” one participant said. “When you find your inner strength,” another noted, “no one can touch you.”
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Robert Frost is undoubtedly a New England poet, a realist poet who portrays the region in minute detail. And he’s given us iconic, seemingly straightforward lines: “The road not taken,” and “Good fences make good neighbors,” are just two. But his poems are all about negotiating language and complexity. How can a poem help us think about perspective and comparison? After all, “all the fun’s in how you say a thing.”
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