Author: Joan Murray
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807068694
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Get Book Here
Book Description
The week after the attack on the World Trade Center, Joan Murray read her poem about it, "Survivors--Found," on National Public Radio. Thousands heard her poem and were so moved that they contacted her to ask for copies. In the wake of our nation's tragedy, poetry has taken on a new relevance in people's lives. As Dinitia Smith noted in The New York Times, "In the weeks since the terrorist attacks, people have been consoling themselves-and one another-with poetry in an almost unprecedented way." Poems to Live By features sixty of the finest poems by an international group of distinguished writers, including W. H. Auden, Czeslaw Milosz, Bertolt Brecht, Yehuda Amichai, Mary Oliver, Miguel de Unamuno, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Sharon Olds. Agreeing with Kenneth Burke that literature is equipment for living, Murray has arranged the anthology in six sections that address our most urgent concerns: death and remembrance, fear and suffering, affirmations and rejoicings, warnings and instructions, war and rumors of war, meditations and conversations. Beginning with Faiz Ahmed Faiz's somber remembrance ('This is the way that autumn came to the trees: / it stripped them down to the skin') and concluding with D. H. Lawrence's simple and deep-felt "Pax," Poems to Live By addresses our need for wisdom in dark times, whether those times are personal or the ones we live through together.
Author: Joan Murray
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807068942
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this allnew sequel to the Beacon bestseller Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, editor Joan Murray has once again gathered an astonishing group of poems that speak to our personal and shared concerns in a troubled time. Poems to Live By in Troubling Times features works carefully selected and deftly organized to help guide us through the complexities of our current situation. Included are poems that speak to our anxiety and terror; rally our hope and courage; warn us of complacency and complicity; stir us to action and compassion; lead us to question our leaders and politicians; move us to meditation and prayer; urge us to confront war and violence; and give us hope for peace and justice. Readers will find wisdom to sustain them as they face difficulties in their individual lives or confront our common contemporary predicament. These are not poems that provide easy answers or overheated rhetoric but poems that speak directly and deeply to the soul, from the most important and celebrated poets of our era.
Author: Denise Redford
Publisher: Olcan Press
ISBN: 1916000673
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 103
Get Book Here
Book Description
Sunshine In Your Pocket is an uplifting collection of light-hearted poetry that will bring a smile to your face. Perfect for reading to the family or alone, Denise Redford's second poetry anthology is filled with positive affirmations for difficult times. We would like to thank Equity - the UK trade union for creative practitioners - in their support for this publication. 100% of the proceeds of this book will go towards Equity's Benevolent Fund to provide grants for those who need it most. Due to Coronavirus (COVID - 19) thousands of entertainment workers have lost their jobs and are in dire financial need as bills are beginning to mount up. Despite the public perception, the vast majority of performers, stage managers and creative practitioners working in the entertainment industry earn modest sums and this sudden loss of income is devastating. “When days become so busy As along life’s road we tread We all need a friend like nothingness To have peace inside our head.”
Author: Serhiy Zhadan
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300223366
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Get Book Here
Book Description
An introduction to an original poetic voice from eastern Ukraine with deep roots in the unique cultural landscape of post-Soviet devastation "Everyone can find something, if they only look carefully," reads one of the memorable lines from this first collection of poems in English by the world-renowned Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan. These robust and accessible narrative poems feature gutsy portraits of life on wartorn and poverty-ravaged streets, where children tally the number of local deaths, where mothers live with low expectations, and where romance lives like a remote memory. In the tradition of Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski, and William S. Burroughs, Zhadan creates a new poetics of loss, a daily crusade of testimonial, a final witness of abandoned lives in a claustrophobic universe where "every year there's less and less air." Yet despite the grimness of these portraits, Zhadan's poems are familiar and enchanting, lit by the magic of everyday detail, leaving readers with a sense of hope, knowing that the will of a people "will never let it be / like it was before."
Author: Pádraig Ó. Tuama
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 132403548X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Get Book Here
Book Description
“Mesmerizing, magical, deeply moving.” —Elif Shafak Expanding on the popular podcast of the same name from On Being Studios, Poetry Unbound offers immersive reflections on fifty powerful poems. In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama’s appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and warm personal anecdotes, Ó Tuama considers each poem’s artistry and explores how its meaning can reach into our own lives. Focusing mainly on poets writing today, Ó Tuama engages with a diverse array of voices that includes Ada Limón, Ilya Kaminsky, Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong, Layli Long Soldier, and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Natasha Trethewey meditates on miscegenation and Mississippi; Raymond Antrobus makes poetry out of the questions shot at him by an immigration officer; Martín Espada mourns his father; Marie Howe remembers and blesses her mother’s body; Aimee Nezhukumatathil offers comfort to her child-self. Through these wide-ranging poems, Ó Tuama guides us on an inspiring journey to reckon with self-acceptance, history, independence, parenthood, identity, joy, and resilience. For anyone who has wanted to try their hand at a conversation with poetry but doesn’t know where to start, Poetry Unbound presents a window through which to celebrate the art of being alive.
Author: Cheryl Williams
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
ISBN: 1480956074
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 69
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Collection of Poems A Journey Through Life By: Cheryl Williams A Collection of Poems takes us through the power of the human mind, good or bad, and its impact on one’s direction and journey through life. With the help of music, writing, and positive thinking, author Cheryl Williams found hope and purpose in life. Life isn’t fair. It is unpredictable, bad things happen to good people, and we never know what tomorrow holds. Cheryl wants her readers to realize that even when faced with insurmountable, hopeless situations, even when life seems dark and uncertain, we should never let go of hope and appreciate the beauty and blessings that life has to offer, making the most of every day, loving, living, laughing, and learning. Seasons change, and there is always a rainbow after the storms of life.
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?
Author: Jane Hirshfield
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1524711713
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Get Book Here
Book Description
A pivotal book of personal, ecological, and political reckoning tuned toward issues of consequence to all who share this world's current and future fate—"Some of the most important poetry in the world today" (Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times Magazine). Ledger's pages hold the most important work yet by Jane Hirshfield, one of our most celebrated contemporary poets. From the already much-quoted opening lines of despair and defiance ("Let them not say: we did not see it. / We saw"), Hirshfield's poems inscribe a registry, both personal and communal, of our present-day predicaments. They call us to deepened dimensions of thought, feeling, and action. They summon our responsibility to sustain one another and the earth while pondering, acutely and tenderly, the crises of refugees, justice, and climate. They consider "the minimum mass for a whale, for a language, an ice cap," recognize the intimacies of connection, and meditate upon doubt and contentment, a library book with previously dog-eared corners, the hunger for surprise, and the debt we owe this world's continuing beauty. Hirshfield's signature alloy of fact and imagination, clarity and mystery, inquiry, observation, and embodied emotion has created a book of indispensable poems by a "modern master" (The Washington Post).
Author: Linton Kwesi Johnson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Get Book Here
Book Description
Ranging from protests against police brutality to eulogies for departed friends and celebrations of urban life, Linton Kwesi Johnson's use of Jamaican dialect to tackle British subjects contributed to a revolution in the notion of literary English.
Author: Zetta Elliott
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 1368053890
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Get Book Here
Book Description
Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls. This collection features forty-nine powerful poems, four of which are tribute poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Phillis Wheatley. This provocative collection will move every reader to reflect, respond-and act.
