Poems to make you smile! Critically acclaimed poet Roger McGough has drawn together a fantastic collection of upbeat poems to bring happiness into your day with this uplifting collection Happy Poems. He reminds us that happiness can be found all around us in the everyday, in family, in books in nature and, of course, in our pets! Includes gems from the very best classic and contemporary poets, such as John Agard, Adrian Henri, Brian Patten, Carol Ann Duffy, Joseph Coelho, William Wordsworth and William Blake.
In a gloriously exuberant anthology, Wendy Cope sets out to prove that misery doesn't have all the best lines. What makes us happy? In her introduction the editor says of the subject-matter of these poems: 'A lot of them are about love - of lovers, spouses, children. There are also poems about places, the beauty of the natural world and the changing seasons, about company and solitude, about music, books, food and drink, and the pleasure of taking a shower. And there are some religious poems.' Among the more surprising items are the Chinese Po Chu-l on the advantages of baldness, the eighteenth-century John Dyer on the kindly behaviour of his ox, and an unusually cheerful Thomas Hardy enjoying the sight of seven women laughing as they stagger, arm in arm, down an icy hill, Catullus, Chaucer, Clare, Dickinson, Betjeman and Larkin are among the contributors who help to demonstrate that people who believe that 'happiness writes white' have got it wrong.
Poetry is the perfect medium to capture the elusive nature of happiness and this beautiful anthology explores happiness in all its forms – whether it be a fleeting moment, the promise of freedom and adventure, surviving adversity or the comfort of nature. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, featuring expert introductions for your favourite classics. This edition includes an introduction by writer, broadcaster and parish priest, the Reverend Richard Coles. Poems for Happiness is an inspiring and life-affirming collection that features writing by some of our greatest poets whose work is still widely read today. It includes famous poems such as ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth and ‘Invictus’ by W. E. Henley. In addition to these well-known verses, this beautiful volume includes lesser-known poems to discover and enjoy.
Ernest Hemingway never wished to be widely known as a poet. He concentrated on writing short stories and novels, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1956. But his poetry deserves close attention, if only because it is so revealing. Through verse he expressed anger and disgust—at Dorothy Parker and Edmund Wilson, among others. He parodied the poems and sensibilities of Rudyard Kipling, Joyce Kilmer, Robert Graves, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Gertrude Stein. He recast parts of poems by the likes of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, giving them his own twist. And he invested these poems with the preoccupations of his novels: sex and desire, battle and aftermath, cats, gin, and bullfights. Nowhere is his delight in drubbing snobs and overrefined writers more apparent. In this revised edition of the Complete Poems, the editor, Nicholas Gerogiannis, offers here an afterword assessing the influence of the collection, first published in 1979, and an updated bibliography. Readers will be particularly interested in the addition of "Critical Intelligence," a poem written soon after Hemingway's divorce from his first wife in 1927. Also available as a Bison Book: Hemingway's Quarrel with Androgyny by Mark Spilka.
'Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I'm thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.' Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, Bright Dead Things considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth and falls in love. In these extraordinary poems Ada Limón's heart becomes a 'huge beating genius machine' striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. 'I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,' the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, Limón's work is consistently generous, accessible, and 'effortlessly lyrical' (New York Times) - though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt and lived.
Desiderata, that world-famous poem that begins, 'Go placidly amid the noise and haste', must be one of the best-loved poems in the English language, revered by many as the ideal philosophy of life. Few people realise that it was written in 1927 by the Indiana poet Max Ehrmann who died in 1945 and whose work, until the 1960s, was largely forgotten. This beautiful little book brings together more of the writings of this remarkable man, revealing a love of the world and a concern for its social problems that mark him as one of the greatest spokesmen of the twentieth century. Ehrmann was not afraid to express his thoughts about the evils and scandals he saw around him, and in his quest for contentment he turned to nature and the eternal passage of the seasons: his philosophical thoughts are a search for social truth and peace. Readers will find in his poems much that has relevance today. Through Ehrmann we are led to look again at our twenty-first century values and to turn for truth and reality to the essence of beauty and goodness that lies all around us, if we can but open our eyes to see.
Smile Out Loud is a book to help children build their confidence reading poems aloud and expressing and manifesting happiness and joy, for themselves and the audiences they choose to read to.
There are eighty of Roger McGough's favourite poems in this hugely enjoyable collection, gathered together into a new volume to celebrate Roger's 80th birthday! Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always inventive, the enormous variety of poems from this hugely popular poet will never cease to amaze and delight children of all ages.
Poems are made to read OUT LOUD! A wittily illustrated anthology of poems, designed to be read aloud. 20 poems by the award winning Joseph Coelho will arm children with techniques for lifting poetry off the page and performing with confidence. Perfect for confident children and shy readers alike, this book teaches all sorts of clever ways to performing poetry. Children will learn 20 techniques for reading aloud by trying out 20 funny and thoughtful original poems by the much loved and award winning performance poet, Joseph Coelho. There are tongue twisters, poems to project, poems to whisper, poems to make you laugh. There are poems to perform to a whole class and others to whisper in somebody's ear. Richly textured, warm and stylish illustration by Daniel Gray-Barnett bring each page to life. "Poetry for children is dead. Really? Not when there are young poets like Joseph Coelho" ~ Books for Keeps
