Boston Globe

My favorite Thanksgiving recipe: Reading poems

These verses have enriched the holiday for my family. Maybe they’ll speak to yours, too.

 Daryln Brewer Hoffstot is the author of a collection of essays, “A Farm Life: Observations From Fields and Forests.”

 

My husband loves all the trimmings of Thanksgiving, particularly mashed potatoes. I adore my grandmother’s recipe for Mamie Eisenhower’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. But I could skip the traditional meal entirely and be perfectly happy eating takeout, because my favorite part of the holiday is the poetry that we read aloud around the table.

This is not an old tradition for us. I grew up in suburban New York with parents who loved the New York Giants. Thanksgiving was a typical American meal with football on TV, hoots and hollers from the den, family members rooting for opposite sides. No one thought about poetry.

But as an adult with a family of my own, I began to imagine other ways to celebrate the holiday. And what better way than to pause for a few minutes to listen to poets who remind us to be grateful for so much: for one another; for the comfort of our lives compared to many; for love and justice; for children, music, and gardens; for the nature and animals that surround us; and for no wars … here, at least, at the moment.

 Robert Louis Stevenson has welcomed us to the table: “Lord behold our family here assembled / We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell / For the love that unites us / For the peace accorded us this day.

Maya Angelou has dined with us, too: “My wish for you / is that you continue / To remind the people that / Each is as good as the other / And that no one is beneath / Nor above you.”

We’ve read Czeslaw Milosz’s “Gift:” “A day so happy / Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden. / Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. / There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.”

And Naomi Shihab Nye, who wrote about kindness: “Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness / you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho / lies dead by the side of the road. / You must see how this could be you, / how he too was someone / who journeyed through the night with plans / and the simple breath that kept him alive.”

We read poems after dinner and during dessert. Sometimes just the family is present; at other times we’ve had larger gatherings with friends. No one has ever said no when I’ve requested he or she bring a poem to read. Everyone reads with passion and a strong voice. Some have written their own poems, others have read classics, and there are poems we’ve never heard before.

Elizabeth Bishop, Shakespeare, W.S. Merwin, and Mary Oliver have graced our table, as well as William Martin, who has reminded us not to push our children so hard: “Do not ask your children / to strive for extraordinary lives. / Such striving may be admirable / But it is the way of foolishness. / Help them instead to find the wonder / and the marvel of an ordinary life.”

During COVID-19, I read Pablo Neruda’s “Keeping Still”: “Now we count to twelve / and let’s keep quiet / For once on earth / let’s not talk in any language; let’s stop for one second, / and not move our arms so much. / A moment like that would smell sweet, no hurry, no engines, all of us at the same time / in need of rest.”

There was Joy Harjo’s “For Calling the Spirit Back From Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet”: “Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you. / Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.”

And Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Write it on your heart / that every day is the best day in the year. / He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day / who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.”

Who wouldn’t welcome Wendell Berry to their feast? In his poem “The Peace of Wild Things,” when he wakes in the night feeling despair, he recalls the healing power of nature: “In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. / I come into the peace of wild things.”

Last year, our daughter went to her boyfriend’s aunt’s house outside Boston for the holiday. Before they arrived, the aunt emailed me and asked such a thoughtful and welcoming question: What are your Thanksgiving traditions? She wanted to surprise our daughter, to make her feel at home.

“We read poems,” I said.

And so they did.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/23/opinion/poems-to-read-on-thanksgiving/