How Lovely the Ruins: Inspirational Poems and Words for Difficult Times

by Annie Chagnot (Editor), Emi Ikkanda (Editor), Rebecca Foust (Contributor)

This wide-ranging collection of inspirational poetry and prose offers readers solace, perspective, and the courage to persevere.

In times of personal hardship or collective anxiety, words have the power to provide comfort, meaning, and hope. The past year has seen a resurgence of poetry and inspiring quotes--posted on social media, appearing on bestseller lists, shared from friend to friend. Honoring this communal spirit, How Lovely the Ruins is a timeless collection of both classic and contemporary poetry and short prose that can be of help in difficult times--selections that offer wisdom and purpose, and that allow us to step out of our current moment to gain a new perspective on the world around us as well as the world within.

The poets and writers featured in this book represent the diversity of our country as well as voices beyond our borders, including Maya Angelou, W. H. Auden, Danez Smith, Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alice Walker, Adam Zagajewski, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, Anna Akhmatova, Yehuda Amichai, and Robert Frost. And the book opens with a stunning foreword by Elizabeth Alexander, whose poem "Praise Song for the Day," delivered at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, ushered in an era of optimism. In works celebrating our capacity for compassion, our patriotism, our right to protest, and our ability to persevere, How Lovely the Ruins is a beacon that illuminates our shared humanity, allowing us connection in a fractured world.

Includes poetry, prose, and quotations from:
Elizabeth Alexander - Marcus Aurelius - Karen Armstrong - Matthew Arnold - Ellen Bass - Brian Bilston - Gwendolyn Brooks - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Octavia E. Butler - Regie Cabico - Dinos Christianopoulos - Lucille Clifton - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Leonard Cohen - Wendy Cope - E. E. Cummings - Charles Dickens - Mark Doty - Thomas Edison - Albert Einstein - Ralph Ellison - Kenneth Fearing - Annie Finch - Rebecca Foust - Nikki Giovanni - Stephanie Gray - John Green - Hazel Hall - Thich Nhat Hanh - Joy Harjo - Vaclav Havel - Terrance Hayes - William Ernest Henley - Juan Felipe Herrera - Jane Hirshfield - John Holmes - A. E. Housman - Bohumil Hrabal - Robinson Jeffers - Georgia Douglas Johnson - James Weldon Johnson - Paul Kalanithi - Robert F. Kennedy - Omar Khayyam - Emma Lazarus - Li-Young Lee - Denise Levertov - Ada Limon - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Nelson Mandela - Masahide - Khaled Mattawa - Jamaal May - Claude McKay - Edna St. Vincent Millay - Pablo Neruda - Anais Nin - Olga Orozco - Ovid - Pier Paolo Pasolini - Edgar Allan Poe - Claudia Rankine - Adrienne Rich - Rainer Maria Rilke - Alberto Rios - Edwin Arlington Robinson - Eleanor Roosevelt - Christina Rossetti - Muriel Rukeyser - Sadhguru - Carl Sandburg - Vikram Seth - Charles Simic - Safiya Sinclair - Effie Waller Smith - Maggie Smith - Tracy K. Smith - Leonora Speyer - Gloria Steinem - Clark Strand - Wislawa Szymborska - Rabindranath Tagore - Sara Teasdale - Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Vincent van Gogh - Ocean Vuong - Florence Brooks Whitehouse - Walt Whitman - Ella Wheeler Wilcox - William Carlos Williams - Virginia Woolf - W. B. Yeats - Saadi Youssef - Javier Zamora - Howard Zinn

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Self Help

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2017

Reviews

[Tara Bloom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indeed, ruins can be lovely. But when you’ve known them before—before the damage and betrayal, when everything was strong and in-tact and gleaming with promises of safety, security and opportunity—it can be a long way to seeing beauty in their ruin. First, you suffer the attack. Then, you grieve what is lost and summon anger to fight your despair. Then, with that anger and holding hands with others, you step forward to rebuild or fight or move on. Only after much time has passed, and after the pain has changed from sharp to blunt to forgotten, can we see our ruins tenderly, as beautiful parts of ourselves.

That journey from hope to hopelessness to seed of hope again is the arc of this poetry collection.

Because the selections are grouped together along some varied steps, its easy for a reader to jump in at any place where she might seek to find resonance.

And there are many words of resonance in these works of art.

The book’s intent, as I glean it from the handful of overtly political content as well as the description on the inside jacket and the foreword, is to soothe the souls of progressives and marginalized individuals who are experiencing “collective anxiety” in the wake of 62 million people having voted to elect an unqualified, narcissist, racist, authoritarian, sexual predator to the highest office of our country.

Whether or not poetry can offer solace to a nation as a whole, I can’t begin to say. But the poems, individually and taken collectively, did have a tremendously uplifting effect on this reader.

I didn’t buy the book for its political or cultural commiserations. I bought it because of pain I’ve been experiencing. “Difficult times” for me are deeply personal.

But for both audiences—people feeling justifiable anxiety about their safety and opportunity in this country, and people suffering through difficult, life-changing personal pain—the poems in this collection do provide some comfort.

Keeping me from giving five stars: I wanted more. I wanted a section about feeling lost and confused. I wanted more anger. I wanted more poems in the book as a whole.

As-is, however, it’s a very good book to have on your bookshelf for the many times in life where suddenly what-was is no more.

[Kerry (lines i underline)]

5.0 ⭐️ If you are looking for a collection of poetry that is soulful, surprising, challenging and comforting, this is it. I discovered so many new to me poets by working my way through this book. And, I had very few of those frustrating, “I don’t get this - what is this poem even about!” feelings that sometimes come when you read poetry. This is a collection that may help you to become more open to the idea of bringing poetry into your daily life.

I greatly appreciated the refreshing diversity in the collection too. Very often, poetry collections can be dominated by voices and perspectives that have been centered for a very long time.

I wish these editors would compile another book, because there are not enough collections that offer what I found here. I will gift this book to others and treasure it on my own shelves.

[Madeleine (Top Shelf Text) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Random House for my free review copy!

An absolutely breathtaking collection of poems and quotes. It took me the entirety of 2018 to work my way through this one, and I'm just going to start all over again in 2019. Highly recommended for everyone, and especially for those who haven't tried reading poetry as a regular practice.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this book out in hopes that it would be uplifting and hopeful, “inspirational poems and words for difficult times” as it says on the cover. The introduction and marketing blurb are thinly veiled descriptions of how the nation and our collective mental well-being has gone to hell since trump attained the presidency thanks to the Electoral College. I was looking forward to poems that would help me feel better about this (and to help me get out of a personal funk/depressed period). Instead, I read poem after poem hammering home thoughts of despair, hopelessness, and injustice. It took me 3 months to get through this slim volume (I could only handle about five passages per night) that by the time I finally got to the hopeful section (roughly the last 20 pages of the book), I was already finally starting to feel better on my own. I’ve drastically decreased my time spent on Twitter since it’s now just a dumpster fire shit-show highlighting everything that’s wrong with the world, and if you have similar sentiments, I’d probably recommend you skip this one. Surely there are much happier, more encouraging collections of poetry out there. I just felt like this wallowed in grief and darkness when all I wanted was to try to find a bright side.

Bookmarked passages:

To say that the future will be different from the present is, to scientists, hopelessly self-evident. I observe regretfully that in politics, however, it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism, or branded as subversion. There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.
--Robert F. Kennedy

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
--Thomas A. Edison

“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith
“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass
“I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It In” by E. E. Cummings

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this book at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, and I read on it all through the year. I'd hoped to find comfort in these poems and quotes "for difficult times," and I did, at times, but it was a mixed bag. The ruins focus primarily on political ruins arising out of our American election of 2016, and those ruins definitely continued through 2020, but there's no mention, of course, of the greater ruins spawned by the pandemic that began and then flourished during the year, though the poems, like all good poems, touches on those, too.

All of which is to say I liked very much, but did not love, this book of poems about disasters and troubles and difficulties, and I don't really know why. Lots of familiar poems here: "Hope" is the Thing with Feathers; Maya Angelou's Still I Rise; Fire and Ice; Langston Hughes' I, Too. New-to-me poems, also, including W. H. Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts; What Kind of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich; and Jamaal May's There Are Birds Here from which the book's title is taken.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoroughly adequate collection of poems and quotes.

[Paul Manytravels · Rating 3 out of 5]

How Lovely the Ruins is a nice collection of both poetry and inspirational thoughts organized around six themes. The poems are well selected and closely matched t the theme of their section of the book and the inspirational quotations stand out in their eloquence and insightfulness.
Many of the poets included in this anthology will be familiar to most readers while and equal number will not be. This juxtaposition of the familiar and unfamiliar provides one of the book's strengths, allowing readers to recall works they may have already enjoyed and to discover new works or authors to expand their reading experience.
The juxtaposition of old and new and the close adherence to the themes the editors created make this good collection and most readers will find some contributions that they will want to remember and come back to in the years ahead.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this collection of poetry. A beautiful combination of old classics and newer, evocative works that stopped me in my tracks. And a few I didn’t understand at all, for good measure, as with all poetry collections. :)

I’m looking forward to buying this collection myself and revisiting again in the midst of dark days. I have a feeling this is a book I will put up again and again, and there will be a lot of underlining and notes scribbled on the page.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How lovely, truly. I look forward to returning to the poems in this collection in the future. So much so that I returned my library copy and picked up a copy to keep on my shelf. The poetry in this book are carefully selected to empathize with challenging times and inspire hope for the way forward.

[Jennie Apter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful poetry for hard times from a variety of perspectives, times, writing styles. I read and turned to a library copy over a few weeks and recently received it as a holiday wish list request to add to my collection for meditation teaching and personal practice.

[Becka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't found a collection of poetry as coherent and lovely since Jackie O's collection. I finished it in one breathless, heartbroken gulp.

[Cara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I enjoy poetry from time to time, I'd say I get on poetry "kicks" a few times a year—when all I will read in a month is poetry. And then just like that, my appetite is quenched until the next thirst arises.

I saw this collection, How Lovely The Ruins (Inspirational Poems and Words for Difficult Times), and thought, I don't care for "inspiration" or "words for difficult times", blah blah, so I wasn't sure what to expect (hoping it wouldn't be filled with non-sense, like those inspirational quotes that are supposed to be uplifting [pet peeve, much dislike for such things]). To my satisfaction, it isn't. Instead, it is filled with a wide variety of poetry and quotes that are diverse enough to entertain those who devour poetry, or like me, enjoy it from time to time.

The book is broken down into six sections: How Lovely The Ruins, Against Tyranny, The Aching, The New Patriots, Gathering Strength, and To Summon Hope. I'm not sure why it is broken into such sections or why it was decided upon to title the sections at all—usually when one does this there's a clear reason...Against Tyranny, one might think this section would be quotes and poetry against autocracy...it's not. My biggest gripe: there is no real rhyme or reason behind the sections. The poetry speaks for itself and has little to do with the titled sections. It is just a mismatched book of, in my opinion, random stuff haphazardly put together (after all, the jacket flap says, now in these "...difficult times [the purpose is to] allow us to step out of our current moment to gain a new perspective on the world around us..."). So, the publishing agency wanted to take advantage and cash in on our ongoing and current anxieties, because we carry a lot on our shoulders, to say the least. Sometimes, too much to comprehend. But a collection of smattered words isn't going to change it and neither is this book.

Again, not to say I didn't enjoy some of the more interesting and multifarious pieces. Putting aside my grumblings of the structure and purpose of this book, I did find there to be a lot of known poets, public figures, classics, and new contemporaries that caught my affection. I was able to learn of new poets and rediscover some of my favorites. So, it was worth my time and worth the read. Should you buy it? No, probably not. If you can check it out from the library, it would be worth the effort.

*If you know someone who enjoys a little poetry now and then or someone who just wants to dabble, this would be a great gift for the casual or new(er) reader.

[Danielle Shroyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

How lovely a collection of poems

[Coles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to receive this book in a giveaway, and I am glad I had even entered to win it! To be completely honest, I wasn't sure how much this book would resonate with me. That is to say: I love poetry (especially concerning "difficult" subjects), but typically do not enjoy quotes and bits of poems strewn about social media (particularly those meant to "inspire"). I figured, at the very least, this would make an excellent gift to leave in my therapist's waiting room. However, I am pleased to report that this book seems to have something for everyone, and will likely remain on my personal shelf (although I am still considering getting another copy for that waiting room).
The book is divided into six sections: How Lovely the Ruins, Against Tyranny, The Aching, The New Patriots (my personal favorite), Gathering Strength, and To Summon Hope. Throughout all of the sections, there is a mix between contemporary and classic poetry, quotes, and excerpts, written by a diverse group of people (nationality, race, time period, etc.). It is so wonderfully varied that the reader can sift through the pages, picking and choosing what resonates with their personal style and current mood.
A small wish is that the book would note what language the translated poems were originally written in, but that's nothing a quick Google search can't provide me. Overall, I would say this book is worth picking up and checking out.

[Kanti]

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
-

when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings
-

how lovely the ruins
how ruined the lovely
-

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the full clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How changed with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

~ INVICTUS, William Ernest Henley, (p. 149).
-

[Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 2017 anthology mixes new and time-honored poems, mainstream and marginalized voices, poetry and short prose excerpts. The selections highlight themes of despair, beauty amid the chaos, action, redemption, and hope. The book takes its title from lines in “There Are Birds Here” by Jamaal May.

A few longtime favorites of mine included in How Lovely the Ruins: “From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee, “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, and “I Am Running into a New Year” by Lucille Clifton.

A few stunning discoveries: “Four in the Morning” by Wislawa Szymborska, “A Display of Mackerel” by Mark Doty, and “The Place Where We Are Right” by Yehuda Amichai.

[Maribeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclosure: Editor Annie Chagnot is my niece by marriage.

That said, this is a lovely edition of poetry. Thoughtful, powerful, and interesting, it's a reminder that life is filled with beauty even when we are sometimes too busy or overwhelmed to see it. This volume asks us to take a moment to rest and really see what the world offers, be it pain or pleasure, and to inhale those moments with gusto. It's lovely to see poetry from across the ages, too - and to get to enjoy old favorites as well as discover new poets and their gifts.

[Khalid abdi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am running into a new year

By: Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
And the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

[Mads Doss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great compilation of classic and modern poetry. I enjoyed that quotes were interspersed throughout. The poem selection was designed to help you through difficult times, and I do find this collection comforting. I don’t, however, particularly like the political leaning of some of the poems about America. Even though they fit within my own political viewpoints, it’s not really what I was looking for when I picked up this collection. Despite that, I would still recommend this selection.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was completely disappointed with this book. I assumed it was a book to help with getting through hard times, like depression for instance. The book started out alright with some insightful poems and quotes. But by the middle of the book, it turned into a democratic political agenda. This book is not meant to help anyone through hard times. It is for millennial democrats who can’t face reality. Don’t read this book of you really need help with depression or mental illness. It won’t help you.

[Kathryn G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry for the Heart

Of course, all poetry is for the heart but this little book has been organized in a way to specifically address different heart feelings. Each poem seems purposefully placed, and each is a jewel I it’s own right. Together, the book is truly lovely. I have seen many of these in other collections, so they are old friends. There are some new ones as well. You will enjoy it, no matter which mood your heart is feeling.

[Kathryn Weibezahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect for right now.

[Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well put together collection of poetry! I found a few new poets whose stuff I can’t wait to read. Definitely a nice collection to open up when you’re feeling pessimistic.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting out with some luminous truths by Elizabeth Alexander was genius:

“HUMAN BEINGS HAVE NEVER LIVED without song, across time and tribe. So poetry has always been necessary, and people have always made it, and shared it, and in some way lived by it. That is steady-state in human history.”

“Poems are how we say: this is who we are. Poems are heart and soul made legible. Poetry is ancient; poetry is the way peoples have carried their songs forward across culture and across time, saying this is who we are and this is where and what we come from.”

“The will to sing is perhaps even biological, for who can imagine a child who does not sing, who does not urge to tell a story or sit riveted in the presence of one? This is the bardic aspect of poetry, the singing of the song of the people that is the work that poets do, even when there is no explicit “we” in the poem, even when the claims are not grand, even when the language is abstract.”

“The poems gathered in this volume move across time and place to remind us that the world has always been broken and has always been whole.”

“Poets hold water in their cupped hands and run back from the well because someone is parched and thirsting. The poem is a force field against despair.”

Is there anything else to say, really? It is worth repeating: ‘heart and soul made legible,’ ‘carries their songs from ancient times;’ a biological will to sing and be enthralled by stories. Don’t you know ‘the world has always been broken and has always been whole?’ “A force field against despair.”

This one is amazing play on words in a powerful and political way and I wish anti refugees would read it, and feel it.

REFUGEES Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(now read from bottom to top)

Interspersed are some important, soul renewing quotes like from Paul Kalanithi:

“When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.” —PAUL KALANITHI, When Breath Becomes Air

Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you. —OVID

It’s not that the stars are indifferent: their troubles have already passed —CLARK STRAND

It snowed and snowed today, and I walked several time in the quiet of streets not choked with cars, and almost cried as I was able to drink quite deeply of blessed quiet.

SONG OF QUIETNESS Robinson Jeffers

Drink deep, drink deep of quietness,
And on the margins of the sea
Remember not thine old distress
Nor all the miseries to be.
Calmer than mists, and cold
As they, that fold on fold
Up the dim valley are rolled,
Learn thou to be.

We are in these ruins but we are here together is what all the poems say, and losing hope means they have won, the evildoers that sow hate and ignorance, who all they are hate and ignorance. My friend’s gay pride flag was stolen from her house, and so they replaced it with a transgender, and on and on with all the flags that scream human rights for everyone, and she said, the person or people who stole in are in a sad, lonely beige closet of beige clothes, and this is the color to fight that evil beige-ness.

THE GUEST HOUSE Rumi TRANSLATED BY COLEMAN BARKS
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

A GREEN CRAB’S SHELL Mark Doty

A gull’s gobbled the center, leaving this chamber
—size of a demitasse— open to reveal a shocking,
Giotto blue. Though it smells of seaweed and ruin,
this little traveling case comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing surrounded by the brilliant rinse of summer’s firmament.

What color is the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die, if we could be opened into this—
if the smallest chambers of ourselves, similarly,
revealed some sky.

OUT BEYOND IDEAS Rumi TRANSLATED BY COLEMAN BARKS

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

EXPERIENCE Carl Sandburg

This morning I looked at the map of the day
And said to myself, “This is the way! This is the way I will go;
Thus shall I range on the roads of achievement,
The way is so clear—it shall all be a joy on the lines marked out.”
And then as I went came a place that was strange,—
’Twas a place not down on the map!
And I stumbled and fell and lay in the weeds,
And looked on the day with rue.
I am learning a little—never to be sure—
To be positive only with what is past,
And to peer sometimes at the things to come
As a wanderer treading the night
When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,
And of all the roads, no road is sure.
I see those men with maps and talk
Who tell how to go and where and why;
I hear with my ears the words of their mouths,
As they finger with ease the marks on the maps;
And only as one looks robust, lonely, and querulous,
As if he had gone to a country far
And made for himself a map,
Do I cry to him, “I would see your map!
I would heed that map you have!”

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the
Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Hazel Hall

Life is a tapestry of hours
Forever mellowing in tone,
Where all things blend, even the longing
For hours I have never known.

THE THING IS Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think,

How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.

DISPLAY OF MACKEREL Mark Doty
They lie in parallel rows, on ice, head to tail, each a foot of luminosity barred with black bands, which divide the scales’ radiant sections like seams of lead in a Tiffany window. Iridescent, watery prismatics: think abalone, the wildly rainbowed mirror of a soapbubble sphere, think sun on gasoline. Splendor, and splendor, and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other —nothing about them of individuality. Instead they’re all exact expressions of the one soul, each a perfect fulfilment of heaven’s template, mackerel essence. As if, after a lifetime arriving at this enameling, the jeweler’s made uncountable examples, each as intricate in its oily fabulation as the one before. Suppose we could iridesce, like these, and lose ourselves entirely in the universe of shimmer—would you want to be yourself only, unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer, plainly, to be flashing participants, multitudinous. Even now they seem to be bolting forward, heedless of stasis. They don’t care they’re dead and nearly frozen, just as, presumably, they didn’t care that they were living: all, all for all, the rainbowed school and its acres of brilliant classrooms, in which no verb is singular, or every one is. How happy they seem, even on ice, to be together, selfless, which is the price of gleaming.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. —ALBERT EINSTEIN, The World as I See It

Q & A Kenneth Fearing

Where analgesia may be found to ease the infinite, minute scars of the day;
What final interlude will result, picked bit by bit from the morning’s hurry, the lunch-hour boredom, the fevers of the night;
Why this one is cherished by the gods, and that one not;
How to win, and win again, and again, staking wit alone against a sea of time;
Which man to trust and, once found, how far—

Will not be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John,
Nor Blackstone, nor Gray’s, nor Dun & Bradstreet, nor Freud, nor Marx,
Nor the sage of the evening news, nor the corner astrologist, nor in any poet,

Nor what sort of laughter should greet the paid pronouncements of the great,
Nor what pleasure the multitudes have, bringing lunch and the children to watch the condemned to be plunged into death,

Nor why the sun should rise tomorrow,
Nor how the moon still weaves upon the ground, through the leaves, so much silence and so much peace.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth—never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. —CARL SAGAN

SOMEDAY I’LL LOVE OCEAN VUONG Ocean Vuong

Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not a lifeboat. Here’s the man whose arms are wide enough to gather your leaving. & here the moment, just after the lights go out, when you can still see the faint torch between his legs. How you use it again & again to find your own hands. You asked for a second chance & are given a mouth to empty into. Don’t be afraid, the gunfire is only the sound of people trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean, get up. The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. Here’s

KINDNESS Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread
of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you
out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness
that raises its head from the crowd of the world
to say It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Be like the headline against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest. “How unlucky I am, that this should have happened to me!” By no means; say rather, “How lucky I am, that it has left me with no bitterness; unshaken by the present, and undismayed by the future.” The thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have emerged unembittered. So why put the one down to misfortune, rather than the other to good fortune? Can a man call anything at all a misfortune, if it is not a contravention of his nature; and can it be a contravention of his nature if it is not against that nature’s will? Well, then: you have learnt to know that will. Does this thing which has happened hinder you from being just, magnanimous, temperate, judicious, discreet, truthful, self-respecting, independent, and all else by which a man’s nature comes to its fulfillment? So here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, “This is a misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations (less)

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

PRAYER AT SUNRISE James Weldon Johnson

O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length.
Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.

I AM RUNNING INTO A NEW YEAR Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that i catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what i said to myself about myself when i was sixteen and twentysix and thirtysix even thirtysix but i am running into a new year and i beg what i love and i leave to forgive me

FROM BLOSSOMS Li-Young Lee

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard,
to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days,
to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it,
then bite into the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background;
from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom,
to sweet impossible blossom.

FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1981 Denise Levertov
I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams clear
colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment to send you.
Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered— of grace.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. —HOWARD ZINN, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best poetry collections by various authors which I've read this year! Lot's of quotes and poems to copy down in my journal.
The collection is divided into six parts:
1. How Lovely the Ruins
2. Against Tyranny
3. The Aching
4. The New Patriots
5. Gathering Strength
6. To Summon Hope

Elizabeth Alexander's foreword contains a particular paragraph, which for me, sums up the uniting theme for these six sections: "Sometimes, when times are tough, we may think we have nothing when we actually have everything. Because we are the survivors, and in these words we have all the ancestors have given us. Poems let us feel that power open up inside our bodies when we read the words out loud. If the poems in this book had one voice chanting a refrain it would be: My people, we have everything we need."

From the ruins of life we take our next step forward. We can't avoid suffering, pain, loss, nor unexpected disaster. But we can choose to move forward, to learn, and grow, and change.

The table of contents reveals a wide variety of authors:
I. HOW LOVELY THE RUINS
Try to Praise the Mutilated World · Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh); There Are Birds Here · Jamaal May; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (excerpt) · Omar Khayyam; Poem · Muriel Rukeyser; Haiku · Clark Strand; Fire and Ice · Robert Frost; The Place Where We Are Right · Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell); All You Who Sleep Tonight · Vikram Seth; The Guest House · Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks); The Sentence (excerpt) · Anna Akhmatova (translated by Judith Hemschemeyer); A Green Crab’s Shell · Mark Doty; Dover Beach · Matthew Arnold; Out Beyond Ideas · Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks); Haiku · Masahide; What Kind of Times Are These · Adrienne Rich; Musée des Beaux Arts · W. H. Auden; Quotation from Virginia Woolf; Sci-Fi · Tracy K. Smith

II. AGAINST TYRANNY Quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt; Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen (excerpt) · W. B. Yeats; I Hear America Singing · Walt Whitman; Differences of Opinion · Wendy Cope Terence; this is stupid stuff · A. E. Housman; Quotation from Robert F. Kennedy; Protest · Ella Wheeler Wilcox; Excerpt from Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler; What It Look Like · Terrance Hayes; Election · John Holmes; Quotation from Václav Havel; Viewers may think that they can process it all · Stephanie Gray; Experience · Carl Sandburg; Global Warming · Jane Hirshfield; September 1, 1939 · W. H. Auden; Evil · Langston Hughes; American Pharoah · Ada Limón; Quotation from Clarles Simic; To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing (excerpt) · W. B. Yeats; Toward Nightfall (excerpt) · Charles Simic; Quotation from Karen Armstrong; I Work All Day . . . · Pier Paolo Pasolini (translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesca Valente); Preparation · Effie Waller Smith

III. THE ACHING Excerpt from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green; America · Claude McKay; Remember · Christina Rossetti; Good Bones · Maggie Smith; Dirge Without Music · Edna St. Vincent Millay; Four in the Morning · Wisława Szymborska (translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire); Excerpt from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; Credo · Edwin Arlington Robinson; Hours · Hazel Hall; The Thing Is · Ellen Bass; If I can stop one heart from breaking · Emily Dickinson; A Display of Mackerel · Mark Doty; Excerpt from The World as I See It by Albert Einstein; Q & A · Kenneth Fearing; Hands · Safiya Sinclair; Some years there exists a wanting to escape · Claudia Rankine; Quotation from Carl Sagan; It Comes in Every Storm · Olga Orozco (translated by Mary Crow); At a Window (excerpt) · Carl Sandburg; God speaks to each of us as he makes us · Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy).

IV. THE NEW PATRIOTS Quotation from Anaïs Nin; Praise Song for the Day · Elizabeth Alexander; Excerpt from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates; I, Too · Langston Hughes; Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong · Ocean Vuong; Quotation from Karel Čapek; Second Attempt Crossing · Javier Zamora; Now That We Have Tasted Hope · Khaled Mattawa; Abeyance · Rebecca Foust; Excerpt from “summer, somewhere” by Danez Smith; What Changes · Naomi Shihab Nye; To Be a Woman · Alice Walker; Dear White America · Danez Smith; Daily Bread (excerpt) · Ocean Vuong; Refugees · Brian Bilston; @ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem · Juan Felipe Herrera; A Queerification · Regie Cabico; Quotation from Gloria Steinem; The Border: A Double Sonnet · Alberto Ríos; You’re Dead, America · Danez Smith; Quotation from Dinos Christianopoulos; America, America (excerpt) · Saadi Youssef; Kindness · Naomi Shihab Nye; Moon for Our Daughters · Annie Finch; Langston Hughes · Gwendolyn Brooks; The New Colossus · Emma Lazarus.

V. GATHERING STRENGTH Quotation from Ovid; When I Rise Up · Georgia Douglas Johnson; I have no quarrel with you · Florence Brooks Whitehouse; Squall · Leonora Speyer; Quotation from Nelson Mandela; Excerpt from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; Still I Rise · Maya Angelou; Quotation from Vincent van Gogh; The Peace of Wild Things · Wendell Berry; Everybody Has a Heartache, a Blues · Joy Harjo; Quotation from Charles Dickens; Lines for Winter · Mark Strand; Invictus · William Ernest Henley; The Gift to Sing · James Weldon Johnson; Quotation from Maya Angelou; Be Nobody’s Darling · Alice Walker; Cheerfulness Taught by Reason · Elizabeth Barrett Browning; A Dream Within a Dream · Edgar Allan Poe; Excerpt from When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi; Song of Quietness · Robinson Jeffers; Love · William Carlos Williams; The Day Is Done · Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

VI. TO SUMMON HOPE Quotation from Sadhguru; Prayer at Sunrise · James Weldon Johnson; Where the Mind Is Without Fear · Rabindranath Tagore; Excerpt from Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal; “Hope” is the thing with feathers · Emily Dickinson; Quotation from Rabindranath Tagore; i am running into a new year · Lucille Clifton; Our True Heritage · Thich Nhat Hanh; Quotation from Pablo Neruda; From Blossoms · Li-Young Lee; Quotation from Thomas A. Edison; i carry your heart with me(i carry it in · E. E. Cummings; For the New Year, 1981 · Denise Levertov; Barter · Sara Teasdale; Quotation from Leonard Cohen; Always There Are the Children · Nikki Giovanni; Excerpt from A Power Governments Cannot Suppress by Howard Zinn; In Memorium, [Ring out, wild bells] (excerpt) · Lord Alfred Tennyson

One of my favorites:

REFUGEES by Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(now read from bottom to top)

My favorite author's great poem:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS - Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

And a final quote which gets at the heart of this collection:

There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
—LEONARD COHEN

[Janessa Paun · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems were so great!!!! I found a lot of them that I thought were so touching and relatable. The theme that went throughout each section was really well done. I also really liked how this wasn’t all abstract or took a lot of information to understand especially as someone who isn’t a big poetry reader.

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume didn't exactly live up to its title or my expectations. I know how poetry can shore us up in difficult times (like now), yet many pieces in this collection did not hit the mark for me. There are some excellent inclusions from Naomi Shahib Nye, Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton and others, but I was already familiar with those. Actual rating: 2.75

[Evangeline Mably · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical.

You can cut all the flowers, but you can’t keep spring from coming.

Love beyond marital, filial, national – love that casts of widening pool of light.

That’s the thing about pain – it demands to be felt.

Our preferences do not determine what is true.

[Cassie Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

♥️ saved so many!

[Victoria Oh · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up to 3.