Poems To Live By in Uncertain Times

by Joan Murray

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 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 / 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.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 21, 2001

Reviews

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very decent collection of poems about life, death, pain, and pulling through all those. This one by Mary Oliver will give you a small taste of the quality of poetry Joan Murray has brought together.

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
She took me back so tenderly
Arranging her skirts
Her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before
A stone on the riverbed,
Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars,
But my thoughts.
And they floated light as moths
Among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
Breathing around me.
The insects and the birds
Who do their work in darkness.
All night I rose and fell,
As if water, grappling with luminous doom.
By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times
Into something better.

Mary Oliver

[Ant Tellez · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8/5.0

An elegant collection of poems that explore the depths of some of the darker moments that have been experienced through life, and how they were ultimately used as coping mechanisms for the writers showcased in this edition.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

For an anthology, there weren't many that I liked enough to want to read more of that poet, and a lot of the poems weren't uplifting as I thought it would be. I started reading it right after a tragedy, and it didn't make me feel better or worse, only a handful of poems managed to be uplifting or interest me. A couple of my favorites were "So Much Happiness" and "September".

[Jeimy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems to get you through life's ups and downs.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the concept of this collection — poems that a poet has gathered together over the years, ones that feel essential, eventually putting them into sections (and calling them “poems to live by in uncertain times”). The first half of this anthology is so good. I needed the first three sections in my life, as they deal with loss, grief, suffering, fear, wonder, and resilience. Although I didn’t enjoy the latter half as much, Murray — and the featured poets — definitely inspired me to create a similar personal collection of my own.

[Matt★ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this simply because I saw anne carson’s name. I did not realize it would be a mostly mediocre poetry collection of religious drivel and postwar pity-prose. it feels scattered and haphazardly assembled which, when you consider the publication date of november 2001 and factor in the time it would take to acquire the permissions to reprint 60 poems in the wake of a national emergency, makes sense and comes off more like an insincere cash grab than an attempt at “healing” through poetry. also the editor’s post-9/11 poem that she plugs at the beginning is... really bad; it felt like it was written for a child’s homework assignment. even the carson poem, when taken out of context from its larger poetry cycle, did not feel strong or properly utilized here. anne, you deserve so much better!

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is a bit misleading. Many of the poems included are about uncertain times (dark times, troubled times, war) but they are not poems I would turn to in uncertain times. There were a couple more uplifting sections (the affirmations and meditations) that I think people would turn to in difficult times. The others are good as well, but rather depressing. I feel most people going through uncertain times wouldn’t gravitate toward some of the heavier poems included. But, to each their own.

[Dave Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great selections and a few poems I was unfamiliar with, happy to discover, but I found it uneven overall, sometimes good, but sometimes uninspiring. However, the Naomi Shihab Nye selection "So Much Happiness," is stunning. Section 6 "Little Prayers" was disappointing for a "believer" except for Hayden Carruth's vision in "Crucifixion," the only poem that doesn't evade or deflect a deep personal spiritual experience.

[TickleThyElmo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, right now I'm going through a lot, but I read this too quickly, and I think it didn't help at all. I think I read it too quickly and didn't digest the poetry in this book, but I only read it so I wouldn't get behind in my reading goal. But some of the poems were good, and I enjoyed them when I read them, I can only remember the ones I read today, and still, my memory is a little hazy, but it was a good (I know this isn't the term, but whatever) setlist of poems.

[Isabell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't like the vast majority of poetry. I know this. Why do I keep trying?

The only poems I liked in this collection were:
"Sleeping in the Forest" by Mary Oliver
"My child blossoms sadly" by Yehuda Amichai
"September" by Jennifer Micheal Hecht
"Courage" by Anne Sexton
"we are running" by Lucille Clifton
"Base Details" by Seigfried Sassoon
"Crucifixion" by Hayden Carruth

[Sarah McMane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a lot more from this book. I didn’t care for most of the poems. There were only a handful that I liked, and most weren’t uplifting or inspiring as I’d hoped they’d be. I was hoping this would make a great gift for friends going through hard times, but I would never gift this book. Now I want to make my own anthology!

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algunos de los poetas elegidos no deberían estar ahí. Deslucen mucho frente a figuras como Faiz Ahmed Faiz o Zagajewski. Tampoco le favorece la tendencia patriótica/nacionalista norteamericana de algunos de los poemas, de muy pobre calidad. No obstante, tiene varias joyas memorables. Su problema es ser muy irregular y un tanto doctrinaria por momentos.

[Julie Capell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Would not recommend. A collection of mostly syrupy, obvious and uninspiring pieces. Normally, I read one poem each night, savoring it and reading it multiple times. In this anthology, I only found a couple of poems merited that amount of thought.

[The_J · Rating 3 out of 5]

All that matters is to be one with the living God/To be a creature in the house of the God of Life
D.H. Lawrence

Can Poetry help to create the space to heal and go forward. Not merely personally, but as a corporate entity, a society.

[Mary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting thing about reading this collection that came out of the horror and grief of 9/11 is the naiveté. How could we have imagined that almost a quarter of a century later, our horrors and griefs would be so much greater.

[Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5?

Now seemed as good a time as any to read a book like this. Some of these poems were uplifting, but I would say most were more dark. I didn't mind that, necessarily. Sometimes you just want poems that will meet you where you are.

[Laurelism · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of a collection of poems for life, but this particular collection didn’t resonate with me.

[Sháy The Obscure Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay enough, I liked some of them, I'll give it three stars, I think I had my expectations a little too high going into this.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading these poems since this book was gifted to me in 2003. They have been particularly meaningful this year.

[Anne Farmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I marked several poems with post-it notes. Poetry has a way of helping me see clearer.

[Momo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a collection I liked much at all. I don’t hate this it just isn’t for me and I can’t imagine for too many people either. The covers are very pretty though at least.

[J. Alfred · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times, eh? But what times are other than uncertain?
The introduction to this is a little sentimental, I think, and the selection is not excellent-- tending to the impossible task of desperation in trying to make poetry into a philosophy and even a theology. But still, poetry is important for us all, or should be, and this selection-- like any serious selection-- reminds us of that.
The ones that stood out to me in here were these:

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/t...
https://aprweb.org/poems/an-earthly-b...
https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents...

Read! Discuss!

[Megan Bowers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the collection, though I only really liked around half of the poems. As with all compilations, you take what you like and leave the rest...

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of times edited anthologies of poetry are nothing but schmaltzy romanticism and love poems. I am not too interested in that. This slim volume is different. Joan Murray collected poems to live by in the wake of 9/11. She has here poems by some of my favorite poets: Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Daniel Berrigan, Jane Kenyon, Czeslaw Milosz, and more. I think all these poems are 20th century, they are mostly from English speaking poets, though several poems appear in translation.

Joan Murray's own poem, "Survivors--Found" stands at the head of the collection. The poems are organized into five sections covering the themes of: death and remembrance, affirmations and rejoicing, warnings and instructions, wars and rumors of wars, and meditations and conversations.

Because this is a library copy, I just want to make note of a few poems I want to come back to:


Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Time Does Not Bring Relief"
Jennifer Michael Hecht's "September"
Muriel Rukeyser's "St. Roach"
Billy Collins, "Passenger"
Miguel De Unamno's "Throw Yourself Like Seed."
W.H. Auden's "Leap Before You Look"

[Tamara Gantt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a sample of the beauty and opportunity for reflection you will find in this book:

Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things"

When despair for the world 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 with their light. For a time,
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

This book is a gift to the soul of anyone looking for something to ease the internal wandering.

[Sean Blevins · Rating 5 out of 5]

No mistake: I bought this book the day after the Paris attacks. It was a very good purchase.

I've taken more solace in literature this year than any other. I've relied on it to help me find not only the words to describe lived experience, but to provide the solace that comes from sharing experience and the wisdom that comes from others who have seen what you have not.

I bought this on the basis of one poem in it, reasoning that if there were only a few other poems of similar quality, my time and money would have been well spent. I was not disappointed.

Two greats that were new to me in this collection of worthies: "St. Roach" by Muriel Rukeyser, and "from The Cure at Troy," by Seamus Heaney.

I'll be rereading this one for a long time.

[Antares · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book while perusing the poetry section at the book store. The first poem, Survivors-Found by Joan Murray, was so moving, I bought the book. Survivors-Found is a poem about September 11th, 2001. I recommend reading that one poem if you can find it. The book itself is an anthology of poems from a Joan Murray's personal collection of poems that have helped, inspired, moved, or cautioned her through life. As with most anthologies, there are a few gems to be found.

[Holly Lindquist · Rating 2 out of 5]

With such an ambitious title, this book only has a handful of poems that really have the necessary heft. There's a standout by Anne Sexton and a gem by Naomi Shihab Nye, but as for the rest.. meh. It's a little on the slim side as well, not enough for a full meal of luscious poetry.. For an anthology with a similar theme but better execution, I'd recommend Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection that included many poets I was familiar with and already loved, as well as many new voices. Overall, some of my favorite poems (old and new) were "September" (Jennifer Michael Hecht), "Passengers" (Billy Collins), "Otherwise" (Jane Kenyon), "Time Does Not Bring Relief" (Edna St. Vincent Millay), and "Facing It" (Yusef Komunyakaa.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short anthology of poems - the title is self-explanatory. Uncertainty is part of life and there's an art to accepting that fact. My favorites include: The Inner Part, by Louis Simpson, The Conscientious Objector, by Karl Shapiro and, You Will Forget, by Chenjerai Howe.