Poems To Live By in Uncertain TimesThe 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. |
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ALICIA OSTRIKER ANNE CARSON ANNE SEXTON Antioch Review believe BERTOLT BRECHT BILLY COLLINS bird C. P. CAVAFY casualties Claude McKay Collected Poems comfort too long Cure at Troy Czeslaw Milosz D. H. LAWRENCE DANNIE ABSE dark death DENNIS BRUTUS End and Beginning eyes Faber face FAIZ forget GWENDOLYN BROOKS HAYDEN CARRUTH heart JANE HIRSHFIELD Joan Murray KARL SHAPIRO KEITH DOUGLAS knew leap LI-YOUNG LEE light Little Prayers look Lord LOUIS SIMPSON MICHAEL BLUMENTHAL Moon Muriel Rukeyser Mutilated World NAOMI SHIHAB NYE nodding PAUL GOODMAN Peace of Wild permission of Farrar Praise the Mutilated Press Reprinted by permission returned Robert Bly SEAMUS HEANEY shadow SHARON OLDS Siegfried Sassoon sing Somehow we survive someone song soul stay in comfort stone Straus & Giroux Theodore Roethke Think Continually Translated by Robert Translated by Ruth trees Try to Praise village W. H. AUDEN WENDELL BERRY Yeats YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA