Book excerpt: POETRY: A Delightful Journey Through Life is an arrangement of over eighty well-selected classical poems into eight basic life stages in which most people pass through or experience in the course of a lifetime. These eight stages are Childhood, Beyond a Bumbling Society, In Search of Love, On Pain and Irony, Satisfaction with the Simple Things of Life, The Seasons, On Death, and Lines to Lift and Inspire. Each of the eight stages is first introduced within an appropriate setting or frame of mind under which the selected poems follow. The reader is then carefully introduced to each poem, making it more readily understood. Inasmuch as poetry generally uses figurative symbols and imagery, the reader, coming from any number of backgrounds of education and experience, is allowed to put his or her own finishing touches on the poem, and can thus experience personal enjoyment from the poetic images embodied in the poems.