{"product_id":"ten-poems-to-change-your-life-isbn-9780609609019","title":"Ten Poems to Change Your Life","description":"Great poetry calls into question everything.   It dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind. It opens   us to pain and joy and delight. It amazes, startles, pierces, and transforms us.   It can lead to communion and grace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Through the voices of ten inspiring poets and   his own reflections, the author of Sacred America shows how poetry illuminates the   eternal feelings and desires that stir the human heart and soul. These poems explore   such universal themes as the awakening of wonder, the longing for love, the wisdom   of dreams, and the courage required to live an authentic life. In thoughtful commentary   on each work, Housden offers glimpses into his personal spiritual journey and invites   readers to contemplate the significance of the poet's message in their own lives.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In \u003cb\u003eTen Poems to Change Your Life\u003c\/b\u003e, Roger Housden shows how these astonishing poems   can inspire you to live what you always knew in your bones but never had the words   for.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The Journey\" by Mary Oliver\u003cbr\u003e \"Last Night as I Was Sleeping\" by Antonio Machado\u003cbr\u003e \"Song of Myself\" by Walt Whitman\u003cbr\u003e \"Zero Circle\" by Rumi\u003cbr\u003e \"The Time Before Death\" by   Kabir\u003cbr\u003e \"Ode to My Socks\" by Pablo Neruda\u003cbr\u003e \"Last Gods\" by Galway Kinnell\u003cbr\u003e \"For the Anniversary   of My Death\" by W. S. Merwin\u003cbr\u003e \"Love After Love\" by Derek Walcott\u003cbr\u003e \"The Dark Night\"   by St. John of the Cross\"In Ten Poems to Change Your Life Housden offers a unique map for the Soul's journey and encourages us to begin. Accessible, elegant, luminous, and wise, this book is Soul food.\"\u003cbr\u003e-- Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's BlessingsRoger Housden gives public recitals of ecstatic poetry from the world's great literary and spiritual traditions. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Maria. He is the author of nine books and is a lifelong student of the beauty of the word, including poetry. His previous books include \u003cb\u003eSacred America: The Emerging Spirit of the People\u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003eTravels Through Sacred India\u003c\/b\u003e.The Journey, by Mary Oliver\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One day you finally knew\u003cbr\u003e what you had to do, and began,\u003cbr\u003e though the voices around you\u003cbr\u003e kept shouting\u003cbr\u003e their bad advice --\u003cbr\u003e though the whole house\u003cbr\u003e began to tremble\u003cbr\u003e and you felt the old tug\u003cbr\u003e at your ankles.\u003cbr\u003e \"Mend my life!\"\u003cbr\u003e each voice   cried.\u003cbr\u003e But you didn't stop.\u003cbr\u003e You knew what you had to do,\u003cbr\u003e though the wind pried\u003cbr\u003e with   its stiff fingers\u003cbr\u003e at the very foundations,\u003cbr\u003e though their melancholy\u003cbr\u003e was terrible.\u003cbr\u003e It was already late\u003cbr\u003e enough, and a wild night,\u003cbr\u003e and the road full of fallen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e branches   and stones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But little by little,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e as you left their voices behind,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e the stars began   to burn\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e through the sheets of clouds,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e and there was a new voice\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e which you slowly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e recognized as your own,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e that kept you company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e as you strode deeper and deeper\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e into the world,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e determined to do\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e the only thing you could do-\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e determined to save\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e the only life that you could save.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Only Life You Can Save\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The Journey\" is   a poem of transformation, and as much as any poem Oliver ever wrote, it is a mirror   in which you can see a reflection of your own story. It captures that moment when   you dare to take your heart in your hands and walk through an invisible wall into   a new life. We do not know the personal history that led Mary Oliver to the truth   of this poem. Yet what matters for her, she has said in one of her rare interviews,   is that her poems invite readers to find themselves and their own experience at its   center. \"The Journey,\" like so many of her poems, conjures the archetype of a fundamental   human experience, and in that collective image we are each able to perceive our individual   story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The Journey\" first appeared in Mary Oliver's collection, Dream Work, in   1986. The critic Alicia Ostriker, reviewing that book for The Nation, remarked that   Oliver is \"as visionary as Emerson.\" Another critic, David Barber, writing in Poetry   Magazine, said that \"no poet has more of a claim on the title Rapture than Mary Oliver.   . . . She is more mystic now than poet in certain respects.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I first read this   poem I had just landed in San Francisco from London. That one reading made my hair   stand on end. It confirmed the rightness of all that had just happened in my life.   A few months earlier, I had woken up one morning and knew I should leave my native   country of England and go and live in America. Just like that. Rather than a decision,   it was like recognizing something whose time had come. Everything needed to change,   and the time was now. I sold my house, my library; my love of twelve years and I   finally parted; I read my diaries of twenty-five years, and then burned them. I got   on a plane to California, and I have been there, in a new life, ever since.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The   move to America was a long time coming. I was fifty-three at the time. On the other   hand, it took no time whatsoever. \"One day,\" this kind of knowing just happens. It   happens outside of ordinary time. It swoops in sideways, at an odd angle, and like   the swallow, it is the harbinger of new things, a new caste of mind. I was lying   in my bed in my hometown of Bath, England, when a knowing that had been gestating   for years suddenly stepped out into the clear light of day. When it finally came   out of my mouth, I realized that what had surfaced was the true journey of my life-not   its events, the quotidian ups and downs, but its underground stream, its guiding   motif.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps this sounds too dramatic, too grand a gesture, somehow, for the kind   of lives that most of us live. Yet at the time it didn't feel dramatic at all. It   was the only thing to do. The poem might seem dramatic, too-surely, you might think,   it must have been written for the benefit of someone else; though not for you, not   for your humdrum, ordinary round. After all, you may say, you are hardly about to   leave everything behind and strike out into some mysterious territory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Don't be   so sure. I believe that Mary Oliver's poem can speak to anyone, wherever they are   on their journey. Profound and significant changes can occur through the smallest,   apparently insignificant gesture. If you are in the right place and read this poem   at the right time, it may be the nudge you need to fall headlong into the life that   has been waiting for you all along. It may just mean looking up instead of down;   but in that shift of orientation, the whole world can change. \"I turn my little omelet   in the pan for God,\" said Brother Lawrence. That kind of omelet will taste like no   other we have ever made.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One day you finally knew\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e what you had to do, and began,   . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Everything hangs on that first step. It is not enough to know; you have to   begin. Mary Oliver's great poem starts with this clarion call. The time for discussion   and deliberation is over. I knew that morning that I had to do the only thing I could   do. In a lucid moment like this the mind is quiet with a tender certainty. It is   time to start walking, to stand by the truth you may have known all along but were   not ready until this moment to call by its true name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It had taken me a long time   to be ready. In my case, the shell of my life had to be softened, broken down, even,   before that moment of truth could appear. I needed to be humbled, cooked in the tears   of loss, for any deeper life to emerge. It was the unraveling of my intimate relationship   that provided the necessary heat. We loved each other as ever, but our lives were   moving in different directions. We felt powerless to halt the drift. One day, a few   months before our parting, we clung to each other like monkeys, weeping helplessly   at the seeming madness of it all. Once, during that time, I came out of a hotel in   Washington, D.C., just as a homeless person with a bundle on his back was limping   by. I burst into tears on the forecourt, filled suddenly with the pain of his aloneness,   of my own, of everybody's. How frail we all are; I felt it in the marrow that morning   in D.C.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The pain of loss, grief, and despair is not essential for transformation.   It is possible to step into a new life in more graceful ways. But for most of us,   and certainly for me, pain and loss usually prepare the way. The moment itself may   seem effortless, but a lifetime of suffering may have preceded it. A new life requires   a death of some kind; otherwise it is nothing new, but rather a shuffling of the   same deck. What we die to is an outworn way of being in the world. We experience   ourselves differently. We are no longer who we thought we were. But I do not suggest   for one moment that it is easy. Nor that there are any guarantees. If you start down   a new road, you cannot know where it will take you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All the same, when you are ready,   you begin. The directness of this knowing, quiet yet strong, can propel you out of   your habitual perceptions of life and into the unknown before you have even a moment   to think twice about it. It is a flash from some other domain that is an intrinsic   part of the human experience. Poets in all ages have caught the glimmer of it. Rilke,   in one of his early poems, speaks of a man who gets up without warning in the middle   of a meal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Because of a church that stands   somewhere\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e in the East.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Eight hundred years earlier, the Persian mystic Rumi said,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Start walking, start walking towards Shams.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Your legs will get heavy and tired.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then comes the moment of feeling the wings\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e you've grown lifting.2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The church in   the East, Shams, these are metaphors for the true heart of your own life. You can   respond to it, or you can turn away. The forces wanting you to stay where you are   can be daunting. But the choice is always yours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e though the voices around you\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e kept   shouting\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e their bad advice-\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e though the whole house\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e began to tremble\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e and you felt   the old tug\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e at your ankles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Mend my life!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e each voice cried.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But you didn't   stop.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A journey like this goes against the prevailing current. It requires you to   step out of line, to break with polite society. Other people will feel the ripples,   and they won't like it. Any authentic movement usually requires a break with the   past-not because the past is bad, but because it is so difficult for a deeper truth   to make itself known among the accretions of habit and conformity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It may mean that,   one day, for no apparent reason, you simply know that you cannot continue to play   by the rules you have accepted for years-the unwritten rules of a relationship, the   abuses of power at work, the script you have written for your own life. It may signify   a spiritual awakening, prompt you to enter a monastery, travel the world, announce   your love for someone, or start painting-only you will know how the poem reflects   the unique design of your own journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Whatever your circumstance, people will start   to give you advice as soon as you disturb the status quo. That advice is likely to   be bad. It will be bad because they are seeking, not to understand and further your   calling, but to preserve the world as they know it. Any eruption of the real into   our familiar life is bound to feel like an earthquake. Anyone who has fallen in love   knows that. And yet in the midst of the shouting and the falling masonry you will   know with an unusual quietness that it is all happening in the only way it can; and   that whichever way it turns out, no matter what suffering you endure, it will be   all right. There in the midst of the cyclone is the peace that passes understanding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e though their melancholy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e was terrible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e How many of us keep on walking, how many   of us stay true to what we know our lives are crying out for, when those close to   us implore us to stay behind and look to their needs? So much of your life can be   spent in anxiety and worry over others, especially if you are a woman. Women are   both genetically and culturally disposed to caring for others, even when it means   disregarding their own needs. Yet to walk on, as the person in the poem does, is   to finally realize that you cannot shoulder another person's work for them. This   life is a vale of soul making, Keats said; and each one of us must take the charge   of our lives upon ourselves. Far from being a display of selfishness, this is the   most compassionate act you can do for anyone: to stand by the truth of your own life   and live it as fully and passionately as you are able.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In leaving your past behind   you, you walk through your fear of the unknown. To walk on despite all the pleas   for you to come back is to know that you are free from the clutches of guilt. When   you are free of the grip of guilt and fear, love blooms-love of the truth. You will   say what you have to say, and do what you have to do; not out of anger, nor irresponsibility,   but because if you do not cleave to the truth, you know you will die. After all,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was already late\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e enough, and a wild night,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e and the road full of fallen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e branches   and stones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Already late enough: how long will you go on sleeping? This calling   is passionate, urgent, even. Once you hear it, you cannot help but feel how late   it is. You may have waited all your life for this one moment; there are no second   thoughts. You wake to a wild night. Why does Mary Oliver insist it be wild? Perhaps   because truth is wild; it is dangerous. It upsets things, brings down branches that   were rotten on the tree, dislodges stones whose foundations were already shaky. It   sorts the wheat from the chaff in our lives. The wild is uncompromising; its terms   are always nonnegotiable, and it would rather die than not be true to what it knows.   Brother Lawrence was wild in his way, tossing his omelets for God. Julia Butterfly,   the young woman who lived up in a tree for two years to prevent the California loggers   from hacking it down, she was wild in her way. It is always a wild ride, whoever   you are, to be true to what you know in your heart in the face of the power of conformity.   Like the image of transforming fire, the wild is everywhere in Mary Oliver's poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No wonder, then, that a journey of this kind can seem fraught with danger, at least   from the perspective of common sense. Danger and darkness are in the nature of any   pilgrimage, whatever the destination. Perhaps this is why, in old Arabic poetry,   travel is considered one of the four great subjects worthy of the poet (along with   love, song, and blood). These were considered the basic desires of the human heart,   and thus travel was elevated to the dignity of being a necessity for any human being   who is truly alive. The Romans felt the same way. Plutarch tells us that before the   departure of a ship in stormy weather, the captain would pronounce that \"to sail   is necessary, to live is not.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So when the wildness courses through your veins,   you have no option but to leave conventional wisdom behind and head for the source-for   the source of some holy river, the summit of a mountain, perhaps, but always to the   source that is in the innermost heart. The door for this journey opens inward as   well as outward, and the inner terrain is often more rugged that any outer wilderness.   Inward or outward, the journey will have its own wild beasts for you to contend with.   And yet from the very beginning, you will somehow be sustained by your knowing, by   the rightness of it all. You will feel it in your bones. You will feel it in your   blood before it ever forms into words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Of course, conventional wisdom will call   you mad enough for even thinking of such an adventure-all the more so when you start   out in the middle of the night. Yet the true journey of your life requires a kind   of madness. After all, from the standpoint of your old life, you may be throwing   everything away for nothing. You do not even know what you are headed toward. Yet   the first step can only ever be taken in darkness. You cannot know where it will   take you. You cannot plan for this sort of journey because the entire undertaking   relies on the unreasonableness of faith.","brand":"Harmony","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302141120741,"sku":"NP9780609609019","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780609609019.jpg?v=1767737894","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/ten-poems-to-change-your-life-isbn-9780609609019","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}