Ten Poems to Set You Free

Ten Poems to Set You Free PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 1400054516
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
Ten Poems to Set You Free inspires you to claim the life that is truly yours. In today’s world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. These ten poems, and Roger Housden’s reflections on them, urge us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life. This volume brings together the voices of Thomas Merton, David Whyte, the Basque poet Miguel de Unamuno, Anna Swir from Poland, Stanley Kunitz, the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy, and Jane Hirshfield, as well as three of Housden’s favorites, Rumi, Mary Oliver, and Naomi Shihab Nye. His luminous essays on the poems show us how to integrate the poets’ truth into our own lives. Roger Housden’s love of poetry and life leaps from every page—so much so that his readers feel they have found a guide and mentor through the extraordinary Ten Poems series. He has opened the eyes and hearts of many, not just to the power of poetry, but to the truth and beauty of the life of the soul. What more can one ask?

Ten Poems to Set You Free

Ten Poems to Set You Free PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 1400054516
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ten Poems to Set You Free inspires you to claim the life that is truly yours. In today’s world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. These ten poems, and Roger Housden’s reflections on them, urge us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life. This volume brings together the voices of Thomas Merton, David Whyte, the Basque poet Miguel de Unamuno, Anna Swir from Poland, Stanley Kunitz, the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy, and Jane Hirshfield, as well as three of Housden’s favorites, Rumi, Mary Oliver, and Naomi Shihab Nye. His luminous essays on the poems show us how to integrate the poets’ truth into our own lives. Roger Housden’s love of poetry and life leaps from every page—so much so that his readers feel they have found a guide and mentor through the extraordinary Ten Poems series. He has opened the eyes and hearts of many, not just to the power of poetry, but to the truth and beauty of the life of the soul. What more can one ask?

Ten Poems to Change Your Life

Ten Poems to Change Your Life PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307421759
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Great poetry calls into question everything. It dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind. It opens us to pain and joy and delight. It amazes, startles, pierces, and transforms us. It can lead to communion and grace. Through the voices of ten inspiring poets and his own reflections, the author of Sacred America shows how poetry illuminates the eternal feelings and desires that stir the human heart and soul. These poems explore such universal themes as the awakening of wonder, the longing for love, the wisdom of dreams, and the courage required to live an authentic life. In thoughtful commentary on each work, Housden offers glimpses into his personal spiritual journey and invites readers to contemplate the significance of the poet's message in their own lives. In Ten Poems to Change Your Life, Roger Housden shows how these astonishing poems can inspire you to live what you always knew in your bones but never had the words for. "The Journey" by Mary Oliver "Last Night as I Was Sleeping" by Antonio Machado "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman "Zero Circle" by Rumi "The Time Before Death" by Kabir "Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda "Last Gods" by Galway Kinnell "For the Anniversary of My Death" by W. S. Merwin "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott "The Dark Night" by St. John of the Cross

Ten Poems to Say Goodbye

Ten Poems to Say Goodbye PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307886018
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In Ten Poems to Say Goodbye, the newest addition to the celebrated Ten Poems series, Roger Housden continues to highlight the magic of poetry, this time as it relates to personal loss. But while the selected poems in this volume may focus upon loss and grief, they also reflect solace, respite, and joy. A goodbye is an opportunity for kindness, for forgiveness, for intimacy, and ultimately for love and a deepening acceptance of life as it is rather than what it was. Goodbyes can be poignant, sorrowful, sometimes a relief, and—now and then—even an occasion for joy. They are always transitions that, when embraced, can be the door to a new life both for ourselves and for others. In this inspiring and consoling volume, Housden encourages readers to embrace poetry as a way of enabling us to better see and appreciate the beauty of the world around and within us.

Ten Poems to Open Your Heart

Ten Poems to Open Your Heart PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307421775
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Ten Poems to Open Your Heart is a book devoted to love: to the intimacy of personal love and lovemaking, to a loving compassion for others, and to the love that embraces both this world and the next. This new volume from Roger Housden features a few of the same poets as his extraordinarily moving Ten Poems to Change Your Life, such as Mary Oliver and Pablo Neruda, along with contributions from Sharon Olds, Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, and others. Any one of the ten poems and, indeed, any one of Housden’s reflections on them, can open, gladden, or pierce your heart. Through the voices of these ten inspiring poets, and through illustrations from his own life, Housden expresses the tenderness, beauty, joys, and sorrows of love, the presence of which, more than anything else, gives human existence its meaning. As Housden says in his eloquent introduction, “Great poetry happens when the mind is looking the other way and words fall from the sky to shape a moment that would normally be untranslatable. . . . When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.” From the Hardcover edition.

Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again

Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307874656
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Every great poem invites us to step beyond what we know, what we think we can dream or dare. Great poetry is a catalyst for change: a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of life- and yes, over and over, again and again, with each new reading, and each new phase of our journey. That’s why poetry is dangerous. It gives voice to our unspoken dreams; it is a mirror to our own deepest joys, desires, and sorrows. It can tip us over into a new life, into a new way of seeing and being, that a moment ago we might even have had no words for. In this new volume of his Ten Poems series, Roger Housden takes ten great poems and in personal, intimate essays shows how they led him, and can also lead us, into a more deeply lived and examined life. Housden says, “Every one of the poems in this book has struck me a blow, a direct hit, each of them, into the heart of hearts. Every one of them, in its own way, has opened a door for me to go deeper into my own experience, my own longings, my own sorrows and joys, and into the silence that surrounds all of this, all of us, always.”

Risking Everything

Risking Everything PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 030742152X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” —Mary Oliver This luminous anthology brings together great poets from around the world whose work transcends culture and time. Their words reach past the outer divisions to the universal currents of love and revelation that move and inspire us all. These poems urge us to wake up and love. They also call on us to relinquish our grip on ideas and opinions that confine us and, instead, to risk moving forward into the life that is truly ours. In his selection, Roger Housden has placed strong emphasis on contemporary voices such as the American poet laureate Billy Collins and the Nobel Prize–winners Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney, but the collection also includes some timeless echoes of the past in the form of work by masters such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Emily Dickinson. The tens of thousands of readers of Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems” series will welcome this beautiful harvest of poems that both open the mind and heal the heart.

Ten Poems for Difficult Times

Ten Poems for Difficult Times PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608685306
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
In his bestselling Ten Poems series, Roger Housden has shown an uncanny ability to choose and discuss poems that strike at the core of readers’ concerns and needs. In this new volume, ten extraordinary poems, along with Housden’s incisive essays, bring heartfelt insight and broad perspective both to our personal challenges and to our cultural and collective malaise. Ten Poems for Difficult Times is the perfect gift for oneself or for anyone in need of solace and inspiration. Ten Poems for Difficult Times “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith “The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass “The Quarrel” by Conrad Aiken “Cutting Loose” by William Stafford “Rain Light” by W. S. Merwin “How the Light Comes” by Jan Richardson “Now You Know the Worst” by Wendell Berry “A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert “It’s This Way” by Nazim Hikmet “Annunciation” by Marie Howe

Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living

Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307346021
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
“Conventional wisdom,” says Roger Housden, “tells us that nobody goes to heaven for having a good time.” Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living, then, is a refreshing, liberating, and decidedly welcome dose of unconventional wisdom that awakens us to the simple delights and transformative joys of the world around us. With elegance, gentle humor, and remarkable openness, Housden takes us along as he recalls his personal journey toward an appreciation of what he calls the Seven Pleasures: The Pleasure of All Five Senses, The Pleasure of Being Foolish,The Pleasure of Not Knowing, The Pleasure of Not Being Perfect, The Pleasure of Doing Nothing Useful, The Pleasure of Being Ordinary, and The Pleasure of Coming Home. Housden writes, for instance, of submitting to the ultimate folly of falling in love, of celebrating our imperfections, of coming to understand the virtues of the Slow Food movement while enjoying an all-afternoon lunch in a small French village, and of discovering in a Saharan cave that, however extraordinary our surroundings, “we are human, a glorious nothing much to speak of”—and learning to be at peace with the notion. Such pleasures may be suspect in today’s achievement-driven, tightly scheduled, relent-lessly self-improving, conspicuously consumptive culture, but surely the greater sin lies in letting them slip away moment by precious moment. “The purpose of this book,” says Housden, “is to inspire you to lighten up and fall in love with the world and all that is in it.” Reading it is a pleasure indeed. “When you die,God and the angels will hold you accountablefor all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.” Roger Housden, author of the bestselling Ten Poems series, presents a joyously affirmative, warmly personal, and spiritually illuminating meditation on the virtues of opening ourselves up to pleasures like being foolish, not being perfect, and doing nothing useful, the pleasure of not knowing, and even (would you believe it?) the pleasure of being ordinary.

Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage

Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 164547237X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Poems can teach us in ways that surpass other forms of understanding, especially when the subject concerns matters of the heart. When the heart’s whispers are too faint for us to hear in ordinary ways, poetry can speak to us with another kind of eloquence. From the leap of joy that a couple takes on their wedding day to a fiftieth wedding anniversary that acknowledges the deep connection that a life together can bring, marriage takes us on a journey that passes through seasons and stages, peaks and valleys. This book honors that journey through twenty poems that celebrate and illuminate some of these major stages and provides not only inspiration for the journey but also solace and wisdom. Roger Housden, the author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life, provides essential insights into the poems, creating a collection of reflective prose and poetry that makes this an inspirational guidebook as much as a volume of poetry. In Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage, Roger Housden offers poems and essays that will give voice to your heart, offering up words and wisdom not just for special occasions but to act as friends and guides to refer to throughout the life of a marriage.

Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime

Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime PDF Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307421767
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
The fourth volume in the popular series that began with Ten Poems to Change Your Life, Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime focuses on what it means to be truly human. In it, Roger Housden offers us poems on life and death, happiness, seeing ourselves in relation to the world, and, of course, the ineffable—the things that really matter when the chips are down. He describes these passionate poems as “bread for the soul and fire for the spirit.” The poets Housden has chosen are Billy Collins, Hayden Carruth, Dorianne Laux, James Wright, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver from the United States, D. H. Lawrence and John Keats from England, Rainer Maria Rilke from Germany, Fleur Adcock from New Zealand, and Seng-Ts’an from sixth-century China. And yes, that adds up to eleven, not ten. Housden decided to include a bonus poem for his faithful readers in this, the final volume of the series. As before, Housden’s luminous essays provide an elegant and easy passage into the sometimes daunting world of poetry, enabling readers to feel that in him they have found a trusted guide and mentor.