From the Poet Baudelaire:

"One should always be drunk,
It's all that matters,
Whether with wine, with poetry, or with virtue,
As you choose."

I don't drink alcohol (why bother acquiring a taste for something that you don't like?), so I suppose I can't really say what it is to be drunk. This Friday, though, I think I came close. I had about fourteen hours of driving with some meetings in the middle. The day was hazy, grey, and sleepy -- perfect conditions for curling up with a good book. Unfortunately, it was rather less perfect for driving, even for those of us who love the call of the open road. I always keep a variety of tapes in the car, so I had plenty of music to keep me going, but I like a little variety, too. Among the recordings I had inherited from my grandmother, I discovered some poetry readings. I may have been tempting sleep, but I put one in somewhere in late Indiana.

There was no danger of my falling asleep! These beautifully wrought words -- everything from the Ancient Mariner to Father William, Psalm 91 to Kubla Khan -- cherished and explored by skilled and lovely voices -- Ronald Colman, Derek Jacobi, Prunella Scales (whose voice is much more lovely than her name), and many other fine British folk I had never before met -- I don't know if I drew breath through the whole tape. There was the elegant, the trite, the scathing, the poignant, the dramatic, and the silly. I was spellbound. I have read a good bit of poetry, of course, but I had never been surrounded and engulfed by it as I was on this Friday. I may have, as Baudelaire recommended, become drunk on words. The very sound of each syllable, rolling over me like waves... Poetry must have been meant to be read aloud, by people who know its music.

PS -- Don't worry about my driving while drunk on words -- my focus was, if anything, greatly improved by my drinking. :)