Barbara Kingsolver delivers her poetry of the everyday with sweet-voiced accessibility and a hint of Appalachia tang. The subjects range from losing weight (or not), peonies, sheep shearing, and knitting—“By involving fiber in my invocation of divinity/I feel assured of a fairly positive outcome”—to marriage, her mother’s death, and visiting a “burying ground”—”This cemetery is full of too much living.” It’s a mix of personal subjects that people often keep private, made universal by Kingsolver’s going public. How to get a divorce—“Don’t fight for these: The car that’s not paid for/Every gift you pretended to like.” Kingsolver reads unhurriedly, savoring the mix and match of words, giving listeners time to enjoy them with her. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
In this intimate collection, the beloved author of The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous.
In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with “how to” poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us. Some poems reflect on the redemptive powers of art and poetry itself; others consider where everything begins.
Closing the book are poems that celebrate natural wonders-birdsong and ghost-flowers, ruthless ants, clever shellfish, coral reefs, deadly deserts, and thousand-year-old beech trees-all speaking to the daring project of belonging to an untamed world beyond ourselves.
Altogether, these are poems about transcendence: finding breath and lightness in life and the everyday acts of living. It's all terribly easy and, as the title suggests, not entirely possible. Or at least, it is never quite finished.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.In this intimate collection, the beloved author of The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous.
In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with “how to” poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us. Some poems reflect on the redemptive powers of art and poetry itself; others consider where everything begins.
Closing the book are poems that celebrate natural wonders-birdsong and ghost-flowers, ruthless ants, clever shellfish, coral reefs, deadly deserts, and thousand-year-old beech trees-all speaking to the daring project of belonging to an untamed world beyond ourselves.
Altogether, these are poems about transcendence: finding breath and lightness in life and the everyday acts of living. It's all terribly easy and, as the title suggests, not entirely possible. Or at least, it is never quite finished.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.![How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)](http://vs-images.bn-web.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940177089379 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 09/22/2020 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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