Soft Rains

I've been reading through Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing over the past few weeks. It's a collection of essays from different years over his writing life. Some are more fascinating than others, and my favourite so far is a 1961 essay, "How to keep and feed a Muse". He suggests the primary way to encourage the Muse to stay nearby is to read. Read essays, novels, short stories, but especially

"Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough".

He himself has been inspired by poetry to write some of his best known stories, such as "There Will Come Soft Rains" named after the Teasdale poem which I am appending here. You might want to read through his short story based on this poem, which uses it as part of the text. Or you can check out a creepy Russian animated short based on the short story.


There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~Sara Teasdale