How to love the world : poems of gratitude and hope /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An Indie Poetry Bestseller!



What the world needs now - featuring poems from inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith and more.



More and more people are turning to poetry as an antidote to divisiveness, negativity, anxiety, and the frenetic pace of life. How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope offers readers uplifting, deeply felt, and relatable poems by well-known poets from all walks of life and all parts of the US, including inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, and others. The work of these poets captures the beauty, pleasure, and connection readers hunger for. How to Love the World , which contains new works by Ted Kooser, Mark Nepo, and Jane Hirshfield, invites readers to use poetry as part of their daily gratitude practice to uncover the simple gifts of abundance and joy to be found everywhere. With pauses for stillness and invitations for writing and reflection throughout, as well as reading group questions and topics for discussion in the back, this book can be used to facilitate discussion in a classroom or in any group setting.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. x)
• Foreword (p. xi)
• The Necessity of Joy (p. 1)
• Hope (p. 5)
• Dandelion (p. 6)
• Promise (p. 7)
• At the Age of 18-Ode to Girls of Color (p. 8)
• In Any Event (p. 10)
• Astral Chorus (p. 11)
• My Daughter's Singing (p. 12)
• Surprise Breakfast (p. 13)
• The Facts of Life (p. 15)
• Fifteen Years Later, I See How It Went (p. 16)
• The Newborns (p. 17)
• Shells (p. 18)
• Bus Stop (p. 19)
• Hoodie (p. 20)
• Angel (p. 21)
• Thankful for Now (p. 22)
• Reflective Pause: The Joy of Presence (p. 23)
• Autism Poem: The Grid (p. 24)
• Kindergarten Studies the Human Heart (p. 25)
• Valentine's Day (p. 27)
• In Gratitude (p. 29)
• Held Open (p. 32)
• Listening for Your Name (p. 33)
• Another Day Filled with Sleeves of Light (p. 34)
• A Cure Against Poisonous Thought (p. 35)
• Forgiveness (p. 36)
• Two Weeks After a Silent Retreat (p. 37)
• Reflective Pause: The Kingdom at Hand (p. 39)
• Today, When I Could Do Nothing (p. 40)
• Red Thyme (p. 42)
• The Once Invisible Garden (p. 43)
• Down to Earth (p. 44)
• Old Friends (p. 45)
• Let It Rain (p. 46)
• Against Panic (p. 47)
• Over the Weather (p. 48)
• Notions (p. 49)
• Any Common Desolation (p. 50)
• Reflective Pause: Returning to the World (p. 51)
• Language, Prayer, and Grace (p. 52)
• The Fish (p. 53)
• Reincarnate (p. 54)
• Innocence (p. 55)
• Everything Is Made of Labor (p. 56)
• Apple Blossoms (p. 57)
• Growing Apples (p. 58)
• Aspen (p. 59)
• With Trees (p. 61)
• Shelter in Place (p. 63)
• Missing Key (p. 64)
• Climbing the Golden Mountain (p. 65)
• To See It (p. 66)
• Unclouded Vision (p. 67)
• Improvement (p. 68)
• Reflective Pause: Grateful for Small Victories (p. 70)
• After Spending the Morning Baking Bread (p. 71)
• Radiance (p. 72)
• Morning (p. 73)
• Wedding Poem (p. 74)
• Pledge (p. 76)
• Angela Narciso Torres (p. 77)
• Mending (p. 79)
• Penny Harter (p. 80)
• A Candle in the Night (p. 81)
• Praise of Darkness (p. 82)
• An Essay on Age (p. 83)
• Easter Morning (p. 84)
• The Cardinal Reminds Me (p. 85)
• When Life Seems a To-Do List (p. 86)
• Moon (p. 87)
• Because the Night You Asked (p. 88)
• September Swim (p. 89)
• What to Do (p. 91)
• Any Morning (p. 92)
• Reflective Pause: Pieces of Heaven (p. 93)
• How It Might Continue (p. 94)
• From Blossoms (p. 95)
• Motherhood (p. 96)
• Wondrous (p. 97)
• Summer Apples (p. 98)
• Third Year of My Mother's Dementia (p. 99)
• Rabbit (p. 100)
• Laughter (p. 101)
• In the Company of Women (p. 102)
• Leaning to the Light (p. 103)
• I Watched an Angel in the Emergency Room (p. 104)
• When Giving Is All We Have (p. 105)
• Offering (p. 106)
• Too Many to Count (p. 108)
• If I Carry My Father (p. 110)
• Weather (p. 111)
• Work (p. 112)
• Reflective Pause: The Joy of Making (p. 113)
• Goldfinches (p. 114)
• The Lesser Goldfinch (p. 116)
• The Word (p. 117)
• Tomorrow (p. 119)
• Quail Hollow (p. 120)
• Compost Happens (p. 122)
• Part of the Landscape (p. 123)
• Essential Gratitude (p. 124)
• Reflective Pause: The Gratitude List (p. 125)
• Gratitude List (p. 126)
• The Dog Body of My Soul (p. 127)
• Scratch, Sniff (p. 129)
• Summer Cottage (p. 130)
• Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer (p. 131)
• Perceptive Prayer (p. 132)
• Sap Icicles (p. 133)
• The lesson of the falling leaves (p. 135)
• A Dervish of Leaves (p. 136)
• Winter Morning (p. 137)
• The Good Life (p. 138)
• Thanksgiving for Two (p. 139)
• Reflective Pause: The Feast of Bach Moment (p. 141)
• Nest (p. 142)
• Getting into Bed on a December Night (p. 143)
• Everybody Made Soups (p. 144)
• Darkest Before Dawn (p. 145)
• Rosary (p. 146)
• To Ask (p. 147)
• There Doesn't Need to Be a Poem (p. 148)
• Wingspan (p. 150)
• Eagle Poem (p. 151)
• What Matters (p. 152)
• In Love with the World (p. 153)
• Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion (p. 154)
• Poet Biographies (p. 160)
• Credits (p. 187)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

James Crews is the editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness , and How to Love the World, which has over 100,000 copies in print, Healing the Divide, and is the author of is the author of the essay collection, Kindness Will Save the World. He has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition , and in People Magazine, The Boston Globe , The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in Ploughshares , The New Republic , and other journals . Crews lives with his husband in the woods of Southern Vermont. jamescrews.net

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of the essay collections The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Gay is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.