Showing titles in Themes & Styles

In Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, Alice Walker examines our troubled times while also chronicling a life well lived. From poems of painful self-inquiry to celebrating the simple beauty of everyday life, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she's urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold exploring the necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker demonstrates that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans....

Drawing upon everyday incidents, common situations, and rural imagery, Robert Frost fashioned poetry of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism. His language is simple, clear, and colloquial, yet dense with meaning and wider significance. This brilliant collection features some of Frost's greatest works, including "The Road Not Taken," "Asking for Roses," "The Death of the Hired Man," "In the Home Stretch," "Into My Own," "Meeting and Passing," "Mending Wall," and more.

The great Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna wrote his celebrated poem Letter to a Friend as a gift of advice to a South Indian king, and it has since become a monument in the Indian shastra tradition. Despite its short length (only 123 verses), it covers the entire Mahayana path, combining a practical approach to daily conduct with a theoretical exposition of the different stages leading to enlightenment. It has thus been an ideal source for many of Tibet’s greatest scholars seeking a scriptural authority to enhance their own descriptions of the Buddhist path.

Through Coleman Barks’s translations, Rumi is the world’s most popular poet. The newest addition to HarperSanFrancisco’s “A Year With” series, A Year with Rumi brings together 365 of Coleman’s mystical, elegant, and beautiful translations of Rumi’s poetry, for listening, reflection, and embarking upon your own journey inward.

Jenny Lewis relocates Gilgamesh to its earlier, oral roots in a Sumerian society where men and women were more equal, the reigning deity of Gilgamesh’s city, Uruk, was female (Inanna), only women were allowed to brew beer and keep taverns and women had their own language - emesal. With this shift of emphasis, Lewis captures the powerful allure of the world’s oldest poem and gives it a fresh dynamic while creating a fast-paced narrative for a new generation of listeners.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness. However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought.

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles. The finest classic account comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE and librarian at Alexandria. Though less well-known than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and much shorter, it is an epic poem which is both exciting and moving, with remarkably vivid portraits of the main characters, Jason and Medea.

Everyone goes through difficult seasons, tough losses, and moments that feel unbearable. In today's world, people thirst more than ever for reassurance and guidance. Streams in the Desert provides a river of wisdom, encouragement, and inspiration to weary travelers.

ABC's Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts reads Streams in the Desert every day. Roberts said, "It's my most prized possession…my family, each of us has a copy and we read it every morning…it just brings us closer together."

Legendary Black Veil Brides' founder and frontman Andy Biersack curated his favorite Edgar Allan Poe tales, presented here in their original language with supplemental materials.

The epic poem, by Maharishi Valmiki Muni, narrates the life of Lord Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala. The epic follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest urged by his father King Dasharatha, on the request of Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi. He traveled across forests in the Indian subcontinent with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana. Rama endured the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana–the demon king of Lanka, which resulted in a great war; and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king amidst jubilation and celebration. The

This major new poetry collection from best-selling poet and priest Malcolm Guite features more than 70 new and previously unpublished works. It includes a sequence of 27 sonnets written in response to George Herbert’s exquisite sonnet "Prayer", as well as 45 more widely ranging new poems.

"Amazing Peace" is a beautiful and deeply moving poem from Maya Angelou. Here she inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. "Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward," she writes, "and speak the word aloud. Peace." "Amazing Peace" is Maya Angelou's radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and is a touching celebration of the "Glad Season" that will resonate with people of all faiths.

Poetry and science, as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists—many of them women, many underrecognized—and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal.

Francesco Petrarch’s Canzoniere (translated in English as ‘Scattered Rhymes’) is a collection of 14th century poems famed for their exploration of love, grief, spirituality and nature. Peter Thornton's accessible new translation brings Petrarch to the 21st century in direct, rhymed, English verse - for academics and poetry enthusiasts alike.

Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the infinite torment of Hell, up the arduous slopes of Purgatory, and on to the glorious realm of Paradise-the sphere of universal harmony and eternal salvation. One of the greatest works in literature, Dantes story-poem is an allegory that represents mankind as it exposes itself, by its merits or demerits, to the rewards or the punishments of justice.

Who was Rumi, and how does he continue to speak to us today? On Song of the Sun, Andrew Harvey, the Oxford-trained authority on Rumi and author of several modern spiritual classics, takes us inside the extraordinary life and teachings of this prophet and poet. Harvey sifts through the many legends and tales associated with Rumi's life to reveal a rich and inspiring portrait of what a human being in love with and empowered by God can become. He mines the thousands of odes and quatrains composed by Rumi, and shares the most sumptuous and ecstatic works, all with clear relevance to our spiritual lives today. At a time when we are hungry for a divine vision of our world as it can be - and should be - Song of the Sun is an invitation to Rumi's most sacred and glorious feast.

After the bestselling I Wish I Knew, Donna Ashworth has now produced an extraordinary three-volume collection of poems that will touch and inspire every listener in the ups and downs we all face in love, in life and in loss. These brilliantly accessible poems bring delight, comfort and strength in the height of romance, the darkness of grief and the endlessly unpredictable moments in between.

Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos - a dark, indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared.

Ana and Connor have been having an affair for three years. In hotel rooms and coffee shops, swiftly deleted texts and briefly snatched weekends, they have built a world with none but the two of them in it. But then the unimaginable happens, and Ana finds herself alone, trapped inside her secret. How can we lose someone the world never knew was ours? How do we grieve for something no one else can ever find out? In her desperate bid for answers, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach - Connor's wife Rebecca.

In F. S. Yousaf's second book, he brilliantly compiles some letters and love poems into a book that truly defines the meaning of how much a person can mean to another. This is very different from his first collection, as this one carries only positivity and hope for a better tomorrow. Prepare yourself to be smitten by this collection.