Caroline Kennedy's Collection of Poems on Womanhood

April 5, 2011 — -- The only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, Caroline Kennedy has written several books, and edited two on poetry: "A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children" and "The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis." Recently, Kennedy published "She Walks in Beauty," a collection of poems on marriage and motherhood.

Read an excerpt from "She Walks in Beauty" below, then check out some other books in the "GMA" library

This book began around the time I turned fifty. Like my friends who had been there before me, I dreaded it for months, and was relieved when it was over and life seemed much the same as before. One of the nicest things that happened was that three friends sent me poems to mark the occasion. One poem was about love, one helped me cope with loss, and the third spoke to ways of being. I kept them and passed them on to others when the time seemed right. To me, that's the gift of poetry -- it shapes an endless conversation about the most important things in life.

Creating an anthology of poems centered around the stages of a woman's life still seems like an unlikely project to me. I have shied away from the personal genre of literature, and never thought that growing old would be something I would do. Perhaps that's because, in my family, my cousins and I still refer to our parents' generation as "the grown-ups," although most of us are in our fifties. But there seemed to be something profoundly different about hitting the middle-age mark -- a sense of accomplishment, an emotional reckoning, and a feeling of renewed possibility about the future. All that, and a tiny terror of sliding down the hill into a crumpled heap of old age. Working on this book reminded me that the personal is universal, being a woman is a profound part of who I am, and sharing experiences and emotions is the best way we can help ourselves and others.