Dancing with Joy


Book Description

In his collection Risking Everything, Housden addressed love’s many aspects. Now, in Dancing with Joy, he assembles 99 poems from 69 poets that celebrate the many colors of joy. Anything can be a catalyst for joy, these poems reveal. For Wislawa Szymborska, the catalyst is a dream; for Robert Bly, being in the company of his ten-year-old son; for Gerald Stern, it is a grapefruit at breakfast; for Billy Collins, a cigarette. Dancing with Joy includes English and Italian classical and romantic works; early Chinese and Persian verse; and poets from Chile, France, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and India, plus a range of contemporary American and English poets. Whether inspiration is what you need, or an affirmation of what is already joyful in life, Dancing with Joy is a welcome treat for Housden’s numerous fans, as well as anyone looking for sheer happiness, marvelously expressed.




The Spring of Joy


Book Description




Call Me By My True Names


Book Description

THE THICH NHAT HANH POETRY COLLECTION: Over 50 inspiring poems from the world-renowned Zen monk, peace activist, and author of The Miracle of Mindfulness. “ . . . the antidote to our modern pain and sorrows. His books help me be more human, more me than I was before.” —Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Though he is best known for his groundbreaking and accessible works on applying mindfulness to everyday life, Thich Nhat Hanh is also a distinguished poet and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. This stunning poetry collection explores these lesser-known facets of Nhat Hanh’s life, revealing not only his path to becoming a Zen meditation teacher but his skill as a poet, his achievements as a peace activist, and his experiences as a young refugee. Through more than 50 poems spanning several decades, Nhat Hanh reveals the stories of his past—from his childhood in war-torn Vietnam to the beginnings of his own spiritual journey—and shares his ideas on how we can come together to create a more peaceful, compassionate world. Uplifting, insightful, and profound, Call Me By My True Names is at once an exquisite work of poetry and a portrait of one of the world’s greatest Zen masters and peacemakers.




The Spring of Joy


Book Description

Mary Webb was passionately devoted to revealing nature in all of its expressions and forms. She was diagnosed with Graves' disease at the age of 20, and in times of recovery she early noticed that her love of nature sped her healing. She also, in these sensitive times of contemplation and struggle, saw the natural world more tenderly and luminously; the urgencies of life were clearer. The Spring of Joy collects together a group of exquisite essays of appreciation, written with the idea of succouring 'the weary and wounded in the battle of life.' They are an extraordinary record of a woman's empathy, not only for the beauty, colour, form, delicacy and majesty of the natural world, but also for her fellow human beings who suffer.




Spring and All


Book Description

Spring and All (1923) is a book of poems by William Carlos Williams. Predominately known as a poet, Williams frequently pushed the limits of prose style throughout his works, often comprised of a seamless blend of both forms of writing. In Spring and All, the closest thing to a manifesto he wrote, Williams addresses the nature of his modern poetics which not only pursues a particularly American idiom, but attempts to capture the relationship between language and the world it describes. Part essay, part poem, Spring and All is a landmark of American literature from a poet whose daring search for the outer limits of life both redefined and expanded the meaning of language itself. “There is a constant barrier between the reader and his consciousness of immediate contact with the world. If there is an ocean it is here.” In Spring and All, Williams identifies the incomprehensible nature of consciousness as the single most important subject of poetry. Accused of being “heartless” and “cruel,” of producing “positively repellant” works of art in order to “make fun of humanity,” Williams doesn’t so much defend himself as dig in his heels. His poetry is addressed “[t]o the imagination” itself; it seeks to break down the “the barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts the attention from its agonized approaches to the moment.” When he states that “so much depends / upon // a red wheel / barrow,” he refers to the need to understand the nature of language, which keeps us in touch with the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.




Poems from the Edge of Spring


Book Description

Mosaic of JoyPiecing togethera mosaic of joyfrom shattered tilesscattered around her,she picks uptheir first kissand declaration of loveand snugs them betweenthe light in his eyes at long ago reunionsand furious lovemaking on an ugly orange rug.There are slabsfor the lives they created together,the children who once quickened inside her,who even grown have the ability to move her.She fills in the crackswith happy surprisesand hands held under pre-dawn stars,certain that grout made from lovewill last forever.




The Prophet


Book Description

A book of poetic essays written in English, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is full of religious inspirations. With the twelve illustrations drawn by the author himself, the book took more than eleven years to be formulated and perfected and is Gibran's best-known work. It represents the height of his literary career as he came to be noted as ‘the Bard of Washington Street.’ Captivating and vivified with feeling, The Prophet has been translated into forty languages throughout the world, and is considered the most widely read book of the twentieth century. Its first edition of 1300 copies sold out within a month.




Crazy Brave: A Memoir


Book Description

A “raw and honest” (Los Angeles Review of Books) memoir from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice.




The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy


Book Description

Over 125 poetic companions, from Basho to Billy Collins, Saigyo to Shakespeare. The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy received the Spirituality & Practice Book Award for 50 Best Spiritual Books in 2017 by Spirituality and Practice Website. The poems expertly gathered here offer all that one might hope for in spiritual companionship: wisdom, compassion, peacefulness, good humor, and the ability to both absorb and express the deepest human emotions of grief and joy. The book includes a short essay on “Mindful Reading” and a meditation on sound from editor John Brehm—helping readers approach the poems from an experiential, non-analytical perspective and enter into the mindful reading of poetry as a kind of meditation. The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy offers a wide-ranging collection of 129 ancient and modern poems unlike any other anthology on bookshelves today. It uniquely places Buddhist poets like Han Shan, Tu Fu, Saigyo, Ryokan, Basho, Issa, and others alongside modern Western poets one would not expect to find in such a collection—poets like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, Jack Gilbert, Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, and more. What these poems have in common, no matter whether they are explicitly Buddhist, is that all reflect the essential truths the Buddha articulated 2,500 years ago. The book provides an important poetic complement to the many prose books on mindfulness practice—the poems here both reflect and embody the dharma in ways that can’t be matched by other modes of writing. It’s unique features include an introduction that discusses the themes of impermanence, mindfulness, and joy and explores the relationship between them. Biographical notes place the poets in historical context and offer quotes and anecdotes to help readers learn about the poets’ lives.