Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime [Hardcover]

The fourth volume in the popular series that began withTen Poems to Change Your Life,Ten Poems to Last a Lifetimefocuses on what it means to be truly human. In it, Roger Housden offers us poems on life and death, happiness, seeing ourselves in relation to the world, and, of course, the ineffable—the things that really matter when the chips are down. He describes these passionate poems as “bread for the soul and fire for the spirit.”

The poets Housden has chosen are Billy Collins, Hayden Carruth, Dorianne Laux, James Wright, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver from the United States, D. H. Lawrence and John Keats from England, Rainer Maria Rilke from Germany, Fleur Adcock from New Zealand, and Seng-Ts’an from sixth-century China. And yes, that adds up to eleven, not ten. Housden decided to include a bonus poem for his faithful readers in this, the final volume of the series. As before, Housden’s luminous essays provide an elegant and easy passage into the sometimes daunting world of poetry, enabling readers to feel that in him they have found a trusted guide and mentor.Roger Housden, a native of Bath, England, emigrated to the United States in 1998 and now lives in New York City. He is the author ofTen Poems to Change Your Life,Ten Poems to Open Your Heart, andTen Poems to Set You Free, and editor ofRisking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation. You can e-mail him at tenpoems@juno.com.1



MY LIFE
by Billy Collins



Sometimes I see it as a straight line

drawn with a pencil and a ruler

transecting the circle of the world



or as a finger piercing

a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive,



but then the sun will come out

or the phone will ring

and I will cease to wonder



if it is one thing,

a large ball of air and memory,

or many things,

a string of small farming towns,