" I used to believe that poetry did not "speak" to me, but I now see how wrong I was. I lived for 44 years with a husband, a lyricist, whose beautifully crafted, heartfelt lyrics touched my every fiber and continue to uplift and inspire me a decade after his death. The special beauty of Dr. Rosenthal''s book for me is his discussion of what each poem is saying, what the poet was likely feeling and often how the poems helped him personally, as when he left his birth family in South Africa for a rewarding career in the United States. " - Jane Brody , Author & New York Times Columnist Poetry to Heal, Inspire and Enjoy Poetry Rx presents 50 great poems as seen through the eyes of a renowned psychiatrist and New York Times bestseller. In this book, you will find insights into love, sorrow, ecstasy and everything in between: Love in the moment or for a lifetime; love that is fulfilling or addictive; when to break up and how to survive when someone breaks up with you. Separate sections deal with responses to the natural world, and the varieties of human experience (such as hope, reconciliation, leaving home, faith, self-actualization, trauma, anger, and the thrill of discovery). Other sections involve finding your way in the world and the search for meaning, as well as the final stages of life. In describing this multitude of human experiences, using vignettes from his work and life, Rosenthal serves as a comforting guide to these poetic works of genius. Through his writing, the workings of the mind, as depicted by these gifted writers speak to us as intimately as our closest friends. Rosenthal also delves into the science of mind and brain. Who would have thought, for example, that listening to poetry can cause people to have goosebumps by activating the reward centers of the brain? Yet research shows that to be true. And who were these fascinating poets? In a short biosketch that accompanies each poem, Rosenthal draws connections between the poets and their poems that help us understand the enigmatic minds that gave birth to these masterworks. Altogether, a fulfilling and intriguing must-read for anyone interested in poetry, the mind, self-help and genius. CONTENTS Introduction PART ONE Loving and Losing Chapter One Is There an Art to Losing? One Art by Elizabeth Bishop Chapter Two Can Love Transform You? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Chapter Three The Heart versus the Mind Pity me not because the light of day by Edna St. Vincent Millay Chapter Four Love in the Moment Lullaby by W. H. Auden Chapter Five When Love Fades Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert Chapter Six Getting Over a Breakup I: Acceptance Why so pale and wan fond lover? by Sir John Suckling Chapter Seven Getting Over a Breakup II: Reclaiming Yourself Love after Love by Derek Walcott, Chapter Eight Declaring Your Love Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer''s day? by William Shakespeare Chapter Nine Consoled by Love Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men''s eyes by William Shakespeare Chapter Ten In Praise of the Marriage of True Minds Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare Chapter Eleven Loss of a Loved One Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone (Funeral Blues) by W. H. Auden Chapter Twelve Will I Ever Feel Better? Time Does Not Bring Relief by Edna St. Vincent Millay Chapter Thirteen Love Remembered When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats Chapter Fourteen Love after Death Remember by Christina Rossetti, PART TWO That Inward Eye Chapter Fifteen Transcendence in Nature Daffodils by William Wordsworth Chapter Sixteen The Memory of Daffodils Miracle on St. David''s Day by Gillian Clarke Chapter Seventeen Transcendence in Body and Mind Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (excerpt) by William Wordsworth Chapter Eighteen The Power of Dark and Light There''s a certain Slant of light by Emily Dickinson Chapter Nineteen In Praise of Diversity Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins Chapter Twenty A Plea to Save the Natural World Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins Chapter Twenty-One The Importance of Being Needed Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Chapter Twenty-Two The Choices We Make The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Chapter Twenty-Three The Force of Longing Sea Fever by John Masefield Chapter Twenty-Four Finding Hope in Nature The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy PART THREE The Human Experience Chapter Twenty-Five The Power of Hope "Hope" is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson Chapter Twenty-Six Welcoming Your Emotions The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks Chapter Twenty-Seven The Healing Power of Reconciliation Out beyond Ideas by Jalaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks) Chapter Twenty-Eight Leaving Home Traveler, there is no road by Antonio Machado Translated by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney Chapter Twenty-Nine And Those You Leave Behind Letter to My Mother by Salvatore Quasimodo Translated by Jack Bevan Chapter Thirty The Importance of Self-Actualization On His Blindness by John Milton Chapter Thirty-One The Power of Faith Psalm 23 A Psalm of David Chapter Thirty-Two The Thrill of Discovery On First Looking into Chapman''s Homer by John Keats Chapter Thirty-Three The Enduring Thrill of the Moment High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr Chapter Thirty-Four The Long Reach of Trauma The Sentence by Anna Akhmatova Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer Chapter Thirty-Five The Danger of Anger A Poison Tree by William Blake PART FOUR A Design for Living and the Search for Meaning Chapter Thirty-Six Principles for a Good Life Polonius'' Advice to Laertes by William Shakespeare Chapter Thirty-Seven Remaining Steady through Life''s Ups and Downs If by Rudyard Kipling Chapter Thirty-Eight Never Give Up Invictus by William Ernest Henley Chapter Thirty-Nine Putting One Foot in Front of the Other The Waking by Theodore Roethke Chapter Forty Should You React or Proact? Waiting for the Barbarians by Constantine Cavafy Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard Chapter Forty-One It''s the Journey That Matters Ithaka by Constantine Cavafy Translated by Edmund Keeley Chapter Forty-Two Hold On to Your Dreams Dreams by Langston Hughes PART FIVE Into the Night Chapter Forty-Three Should You Just Go for It? An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats Chapter Forty-Four Or Should You Be Careful? Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden Chapter Forty-Five Dying Too Soon We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks Chapter Forty-Six Aging by Degrees I Know I Am Getting Old by Wendell Berry Chapter Forty-Seven The Critical Importance of Communication Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith Chapter Forty-Eight Should You Rage? Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas Chapter Forty-Nine Or Is it Time to Go Gently? Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson Chapter Fifty I Did Not Die! Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye A Few Last Thoughts Source Materials and Further Reading Permissions Acknowledgments Index About the Author INTRODUCTION You may well wonder how I, a psychiatrist with no formal literary credentials, have chosen to write about the power of poetry to heal, inspire, and bring joy to people. It all started with a single phone call that came in late one night. The caller was my friend David, and I knew immediately by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. He choked up as he told me that he had recently lost someone very dear to him. "How can I go on?" he mused. "How will I manage?" Clichés and generalities readily come to mind in such situations, but I searched for something specific to say, something that might actually help. Recognizing that David is a person steeped in the arts, I said, "There is an art to losing, and like all art, it can be developed." He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded more cheerful, as though he had tapped into some hidden source of hope. . "Do you know the poem ''One Art''

And so you've reached that time in life when you're starting to pick investments over adventure, clean over scenic, comfortable over intense; when, even though in your heart of hearts you're only seventeen, the rest of you is (how did it happen?) forty. The wise and witty lady of It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty is here to get you through those forty-ish years with poems that reflect our common shared experience. So let her help you take a look at that decade of sagging kneecaps and college reunions and fantasies of love in the afternoon; at Maoist kids, cholesterol counts, adult-education courses and other atrocities - which somehow just don't hurt so much when you laugh. A marvelous book filled with insight and warmth, How Did I Get to Be 40 ... & Other Atrocities is Judith Viorst at her best.

In her deepest and most personal work to date, Leslea Newman once again captures in eloquent, lyrical language the joys and sorrows of contemporary American life. From mother/daughter relationships to family dynamics, from cultural identity to aging and loss, Leslea Newman's keen observations will resonate with readers of any age and background.

A formally brilliant and powerful volume from "one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today" (Carol Muske-Dukes, Los Angeles Times ). Moving from Paris to Beirut and back, Calligraphies is a tribute to exiles and refugees, the known and unknown, dead and living, from the American poet Marie Ponsot to the Syrian pasionaria Fadwa Suleiman. Award-winning poet Marilyn Hacker finds resistance, wit, potential, and gleaming connection in everyday moments--a lunch of "standing near the fridge with / labneh, two verbs, and a spoon"--as a counterweight to the precarity of existence. With signature passion and agility, Hacker draws from French, Arabic, and English to probe the role of language in identity and revolution. Amid conversations in smoky cafes, personal mourning, and political turmoil, she traces the lines between exiles and expats, immigrants and refugees. A series of "Montpeyroux Sonnets" bookends the volume, cataloguing months in 2021 and 2022 in which the poet observes a village "in pandemic mode" and reflects on her own aging. In a variety of tones and formal registers, from vivid crowns of sonnets to insistent ghazals to elegiac pantoums and riffs on the renga, Calligraphies explores a world opened up by language.

A dual milestone in City Lights history, When I Was a Poet is number 60 of the famous Pocket Poets Series, as well as our first book of poems by legendary Beat author David Meltzer. The title piece is an ambitious late work by a master at the height of his powers, a spiritual assessment of the meaning of a lifetime spent writing poetry. Also included are portraits of key figures in the poet's life, including his parents, his late wife and musical partner Tina Meltzer, and Semina artist Wallace Berman, as well as "California Dreamin'," a reminiscence of Beat-era bohemian life. Meltzer's wide-ranging musical knowledge manifests itself in "A Slew of Blues" as well as poems devoted to the likes of Art Pepper and Nusrat Ali Khan, while his esoteric interests are embodied in a series of mystical "amulets." The book's final section contains two more major works, the eight-part serial poem "Night Reals" and "Dogma," a modernist counterpoint to the autobiographical title piece. With its profound meditations on love, loss, aging and death, When I Was a Poet is a substantial contribution to American poetry by one of its greatest living practitioners. As Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes, Meltzer is "one of the greats of post-WWII San Francisco poets and musicians."

Poems deal with loneliness, the past, animals, dreams, war, art, writers, letters, history, welfare, aging, workers, and the imagination

Poetry. The latest collection from prolific poet, literary chronicler, and man on the scene, Neeli Cherkovski, pays homage to his aging and gone friends from the heyday of all their lives, contemplates upon his own dwindling days, celebrates each moment passing by, and attempts to come to grips with ultimate ends. Neeli Cherkovski was born a poet and through hard, lifelong work, turned himself into a constant maker. These poems result from a close alignment between fingers, pencil, paper, and brain.

After the Fall refers to the twin towers, and is Field's ode to the events that transpired thereafter--the war in Iraq and the attack on civil rights in America--as well as his own personal struggles over the indignities of aging. --Publisher's description.

Born in the United States, Shirley Kaufman has lived for the past 20 years in Jerusalem, a city split by cultural and religious fault lines. In direct, sensitive language, Kaufman's poems occupy the shifting border between ordinary life and violence, Palestinian and Jew, young love and aging companionship. They grapple with the meaning of routine, of family, and of life among a daily existence punctured with bombs. Sometimes I need to be nowhere. A place without history. "Kaufman's poems flourish in the spaces between what is familiar and unfamiliar, between life in Israel and life in the U.S., and in those moments when the differences between Palestinians and Jews, mothers and daughters, history and the immediate moment play themselves out." -- American Book Review "Kaufman is adept at revealing the human face behind politics, carefully accumulating familiar details to make a large portrait." -- Publishers Weekly Shirley Kaufman is the author of seven books of poetry and several translations from the Hebrew. Her awards include the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. A native of Seattle, Kaufman now lives in Jerusalem.

Poetry. Jewish Studies. "Marc Kaminsky's A CLEFT IN THE ROCK is a monumental achievement. At home in no world, Kaminsky has an uncanny gift for walking between worlds, traveling like a courier from the personal to the archetypal. I know of no poet whose work, passionate and visceral, inscribes itself so readily in typological time, the perpetual present of Biblical story, psalm, and creation myth. Meticulously grounded--in Yiddishkeit, the maelstrom of the family, wholehearted married love, the struggles of the aging body--these poems open onto absolutes. The chords they strike have extraordinary resonance: a dying father and Moses' encounter with God, a hospital procedure and an interrogation site. Kaminsky visits the depths to find how to 'live / with catastrophe in the world / of signs and wonders.' His book is itself a cleft in the rock, a site of hard-won emotional possibility in a stone-hearted age. These are poems of naked vulnerability and contingency; they remind us what it means to be whole and human."--D. Nurkse

Incandescent poems about living and aging—about being awake in this young century—by one of our most moving and eloquent poets. These poems chart the journeys of sleepless nights when whole lifetimes seem to pass with their stories: loves lost and gained; children and seasons in their phases; and the world beyond, both threatening and enriching life. The time before sleep acts as an invitation to reflect on the world's quieter movements—from gardens heavy after a first storm to the moon slipping into darkness in an eclipse—as well as on the subtle but relentless passage of time. Insomnia embodies Linda Pastan's graceful and iconic voice, both lucid and haunting.

Presents a collection of poems that focus on the themes of aging, loss, and death.

Imperfect Paradise , published in 1988, is Linda Pastan's 4th collection and was a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Poems deal with birds, the past, children, beauty, rituals, myths, the moon, vacations, aging, death, family life, and hope.