Proving that poetry is not hard to understand or meaningful to only a few, Roger Housden has spent nearly twenty years creating poetry collections that meet the changing needs of readers. Housden has a knack for choosing poems that resonate and then writing about them in ways that prompt smiles of agreement, nods of appreciation, and wows of insight. While the poems here acknowledge the “Sorrow everywhere” (Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense”) and that “The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate” (Maggie Smith, “Good Bones”), they also highlight the many diverse ways that a poem, a turn of phrase, or a beautifully expressed direction of our attention can turn grief to grit, anger to action, and pain to perseverance. The perfect gift for those suffering, this is also a must for the nightstand of any thinking and feeling human being.
