Travel Poetry Can Enhance Your Vacation with the Five C's: Craving, Contrast, Culture, Connections, Calm

Every trip I plan to take involves an extended discussion with my husband where we look at all of the places we'd like to visit. We banter about the pros and cons of each. We discuss any airline mileage built up toward free trips, war and other detrimental aspects, and how strenuous we perceive the trip will be. Sometimes we want an adventure, and sometimes we need a "lie on the beach" sort of trip.

When we narrow our choices down, we rush off to the local book stores and to some of our catalogs and buy those books we need to plan the trip-picture books, hotel, restaurant and transport guides, maps, wildlife viewing guides and identification manuals and some literature including poetry, mythology and history.

In writing this article, I chose to include two classes of poetry into the catchall phrase travel poetry. One set of poetry comes from the country you plan to visit and the other set comes from poetry written by travelers to another country. One advantage that poetry books have over other books is that they can be small and yet pack much food for thought and contemplation in a size perfect to fit in your carryon.

I find I have a wonderful experience if I crave something new. If my expectations make me compare and contrast what I dream about to what makes me feel then the trip has been worthwhile. If I learn something new about the culture, something I'd use in my own life then I've received a real benefit. If I learn something about the countryside or urban environment, this is wonderful. If I make connections with others from around the world, this expands my world a little bit more. If I find myself reaching a new level of calmness, my vacation has been successful. In this way, poems may take you on a mental vacation without ever actually leaving.

Craving

Travel poems often work their way into your daydreaming life by providing hints of the exotic. They use specifics about the natural world. They provide good sensory detail to help you relate and imagine. They urge experience.

This example is taken from "Tune: Sovereign of Wine" by Zhou Bangyan [1]: