The Joy Of Poetry

Part memoir, part humorous and poignant defense of poetry, this is a book that shows you what it is to live a life with poems at your side (and maybe in your Topo Chico(r)). Megan Willome's story is one you won't want to put down; meanwhile, her uncanny ability to reveal the why's and how's of poetry keeps calling-to even the biggest poetry doubter. If you already enjoy poetry, her story and her wisdom and her ways will invite you to go deeper, with novel ideas on how to engage with poems. A great title for retreats, poets & writers' groups, and book clubs. Or, if you're a teacher who has ever been asked, "Why poetry?," this book is the ready answer you've been needing. Includes extras like how to keep a poetry journal (this is not just about putting poems in a journal!), how to be a poetry buddy, and how to take a poetry dare.

One hundred of the most evocative modern poems on joy, selected by an award-winning contemporary poet "Bursting with energy and surprising locutions. . . . Even the most familiar poets seem somehow new within the context of Joy."--David Skeel, Wall Street Journal "Wiman takes readers through the ostensible ordinariness of life and reveals the extraordinary."--Adrianna Smith, The Atlantic Christian Wiman, a poet known for his meditations on mortality, has long been fascinated by joy and by its relative absence in modern literature. Why is joy so resistant to language? How has it become so suspect in our times? Manipulated by advertisers, religious leaders, and politicians, joy can seem disquieting, even offensive. How does one speak of joy amid such ubiquitous injustice and suffering in the world? In this revelatory anthology, Wiman takes readers on a profound and surprising journey through some of the most underexplored terrain in contemporary life. Rather than define joy for readers, he wants them to experience it. Ranging from Emily Dickinson to Mahmoud Darwish and from Sylvia Plath to Wendell Berry, he brings together diverse and provocative works as a kind of counter to the old, modernist maxim "light writes white"--no agony, no art. His rich selections awaken us to the essential role joy plays in human life.

Capture the joys of reading in this amazing poetry collection! From that thrilling moment when a child first learns to decipher words, to the excitement that follows in reading everything from road signs to field guides to internet articles to stories, these poems celebrate reading. They also explore what reading does -- how it opens minds, can make you kind, and allows you to explore the whole world. Ryan O’Rourke’s rich artwork beautifully captures the imagination and playfulness in these poems by noted author Amy Ludwig VanDerwater.

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.

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.

An exquisite art book of gentle and elegant found poetry.

Inspired by contemporary English language haiku, accomplished poet, Jude Neale, explores ordinary objects through both poetry and photography in her new collection, Inside the Pearl. These photos and haiku-like poems capture moments and memories - recording and archiving, the history and treasures of Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, Canada. The images range from colourful household items to grainy, black and white snapshots of times past, reminders of a most difficult period in Japanese Canadian history that still resonate today.