Here are some of the books mentioned in my blog with links to Amazon.com, where you can read more about the books you’re interested in, and order them if you’d like copies of your own:
Discovering Kwan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion
This is Sandy Boucher’s book about Kwan Yin. From the Amazon review:
- Kwan Yin (also known a Kuan Yin, Guanyin, Kannon, Kannon, Kwan Um, Chenrezig, Avalokitesvara) as comforter, healer, and female exemplar has been adopted as a personal deity by a growing number of Western women, whether Buddhists or not. In Discovering Kwan Yin, Boucher meets up with many of them, evoking stories of profound encounters, life-saving rescues, and long-term guidance. The wide-open spiritualism of Boucher’s search leads her to a diversity of images, places, people, and experiences: Asian-American immigrants, a Chinese island, an extravagant tattoo, a Fulbright poet, a pagan goddess mass. For those seeking a divine presence in their lives, and a female one at that, Discovering Kwan Yin is a powerful initiation into a centuries-old tradition of soulful devotion.
Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
By Rolf Gates
This book is my constant companion and has been for quite a few years now. Rolf Gates has a very accessible style of writing about yoga and its applications in daily life as well as on the mat. It’s written in a 365-day style, but not in a calendar year, so you don’t have to feel guilty about falliing behind in your reading. Reading a passage would be a great way to start a daily practice, or — at bedside — end a day. I highly recommend this book! Here is the Booklist review:
- This is a wonderful book of instructive and encouraging daily meditations centered on the practice of yoga. Gates synthesizes his experiences as a yoga student and teacher, former army ranger, and recovering alcoholic, and explores the practice of yoga in a fresh, relevant manner perfect for American readers. Each day’s reflection begins with a thought-provoking quote and then explores one intriguing aspect of yoga philosophy. Gates weaves stories of his own remarkable healing and growth with the yoga sutras of Patanjali, and provides illuminating and moving explanations of how yoga teachings apply to real-life situations. With the help of accomplished writer Kenison, Gates succeeds in taking readers beyond the mat, and showing them how yoga works as a tool for transformation. Candid and engaging, Gates will inspire both readers currently practicing yoga and those who are thinking about it. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two
By Mary Oliver
This volume includes many of my favorite poems.
Here is what Publisher’s Weekly has to say about it:
- Following by 13 years her National Book Award–winning New and Selected Volume One, this big and very quotable collection offers more of what Oliver’s fans revere: optimistic, clear and lyrical explorations of varying ecosystems, (especially the birds, mammals, ponds and forests of the northeastern U.S.) mingled with rapt self-questioning, consolation and spiritual claims some might call prayers. One of the 42 new poems watches ravens on a “morning of green tenderness and/ rain”; others describe a mockingbird, a white heron, an obedient dog, tiger lilies, deer, terns, blueberry fields on Cape Cod (where Oliver lives) and a “Mountain Lion on East Hill Road,” glimpsed just “once, years ago.” Poems reprinted from six earlier books (beginning with 1994’s White Pine) broaden the focus to insect life, to weather and the seasons (“I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky”) and to other parts of the U.S.; while most poems use a mellifluous free verse, some choose the simplicities of prose, a form best achieved in Winter Hours (1999).
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
An anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. From the book flap:
- Inspired by Billy Collins’s poem-a-day program with the Library of Congress, Poetry 180 is the perfect anthology for readers who appreciate engaging, thoughtful poems that are an immediate pleasure.A 180-degree turn implies a turning back—in this case, to poetry. A collection of 180 poems by the most exciting poets at work today, Poetry 180 represents the richness and diversity of the form, and is designed to beckon readers with a selection of poems that are impossible not to love at first glance. Open the anthology to any page and discover a new poem to cherish, or savor all the poems, one at a time, to feel the full measure of contemporary poetry’s vibrance and abundance.With poems by Catherine Bowman, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Dana Gioia, Edward Hirsch, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Levine, Thomas Lux, William Matthews, Frances Mayes, Paul Muldoon, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Katha Pollitt, Mary Jo Salter, Charles Simic, David Wojahn, Paul Zimmer, and many more.
Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems
By Billy Collins
This review from Library Journal:
- Collins will tackle any topic: his subject matter varies from snow days to Aristotle to forgetfulness. The results are accessible but not trite, comical but not laughable, and well crafted but not overly flamboyant. Collins relies heavily on imagery, which becomes the cornerstone of the entire volume, and his range of diction brings such a polish to these poems that the reader is left feeling that this book “once opened, can never be closed.” This volume belongs in everyone’s library; highly recommended.
Words to Live By: A Daily Guide to Living an Exceptional Life
By Eknath Easwaran
Amazon.com’s description:
Words to Live By presents a daily affirmation drawn from the insights of history’s most brilliant philosophers and poets. Framed by the simple wisdom of Eknath Easwaran, each message offers inspiration and practical guidance for meeting life’s challenges one day at a time. This lovely bedside companion can be consulted in the morning, as a touchstone for the day’s events, or in the evening, as a way to quiet the mind. Even the busiest readers can find quick encouragement in these timeless truths.
By Stephen Cope
From Publisher’s Weekly:
- Psychotherapist and longtime resident teacher at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Mass., Cope applies the compassionate insights made in his book, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, to this guide to the Yogasutra. Attributed to Patanjali, a second-century sage, the Yogasutra barely mentions the physical postures now identified as yoga. But the 196 trenchant entries, scholars say, contain the body of wisdom gleaned by those who sought, through direct experience, the inner workings of body, mind and spirit. This wisdom tradition (raja yoga), Cope says, is as effective today in diagnosing and healing “ordinary unhappiness” as it was centuries ago. Drawing parallels between ancient yogis and Buddhists and Western theologians, philosophers and poets, Cope argues that the yogis uncovered the roots of fear, illusion and self-deception. He focuses on the eight limbs of yoga (ethical behaviors, disciplines, postures, breathing practices, sense withdrawal, concentration, meditation and enlightenment) to demonstrate their effects in the lives of modern practitioners. Readers will readily identify with at least one of the challenges discussed —be they failed relationships, dysfunctional families, unrealized ambitions and compulsive behaviors. Beginners will find it helpful to read the Yogasutra, provided in an appendix, before diving into the personal stories and Cope’s sympathetic commentaries. (June)
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