Ten Poems to Open Your Heart (Hardcover)

by Roger Housden (Author) "You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing..." (more)
Key Phrases: ten poems, everything flowers, third body, Mary Oliver, Saint Francis, Sharon Olds (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life offers personal reflections on poems about love in a slim volume best enjoyed by people who don't ordinarily read poetry. Selections include Denise Levertov's "The Ache of Marriage," Galway Kinnell's "Saint Francis and the Sow," Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness" and Pablo Neruda's "Love Sonnet LXXXIX"; while the poems approach love from different angles, they share extremely "accessible style and language" (a prerequisite for inclusion) and offer an essential instruction to "Wake up and Love!" Housden follows each poem with an enthusiastic and often treacly discussion in which stories from his life weave in and out of a sort of basic emotional exegesis: Kinnell's poem will "give you the feeling of wanting to live large again on the canvas of you life," while with Neruda's, "you will know the tenderness...as I knew it this morning while reading this sonnet...to my wife in bed." This is a warm-hearted volume, and an encouraging entry point for readers who generally shy away from verse, but many readers may feel that there's a bit too much of Housden's flowery prose and not enough poetry here.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Some people like poetry, and many, claiming they don't understand it, don't. Housden loves it. He says poetry, like love, can open one's heart and "when the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in." The 10 fascinating poems about love that he presents here invite opening the heart, and he primes the pump, so to speak, by opening his heart and sharing a personal interpretation of each poem. His essays are moving, revealing, and beautiful even though or maybe especially because he isn't a poet himself. Indeed, proud of his status as an amateur--"a word whose roots lie in the Italian amatore, a lover"--he binds love to poetry in an eternal loop. By discussing the imagery and sentiments in each poem in relation to his own loves and his life, he makes poetry accessible, helps others relate it to their lives, and makes them feel they would like to read more. Good inspiration to read more poetry and also, perhaps, to write out one's feelings about it. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (January 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400045630
• ISBN-13: 978-1400045631
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #158,408 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If I could give it 10 stars I would, July 7, 2004

By	Mark Nicholson (Southern Arizona USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There's already a great review by G. Merrit of this book so all I want to do is to add my praise. The poem "St. Francis and the Sow" and the commentary by Housden is perhaps the most beautiful, life affirming, soul enriching text I have ever read in my life. To me it is "sacred text". I want to send a copy of it to every one I've ever loved, liked, hated or sat across from on a bus!

I am new to poetry - I've wanted to be interested in it and I've enjoyed it when it was quoted by others - but I never found it accessible. Housden's commentary has remedied that. But beyond that, Housden's books are more than commentary on poetry. They are the best books on spirituality, life, humanness, God, i.e. the "important topics" that I have ever read in my life. Thank you, Roger Housden, for opening this wonderful world to me.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Wake up and Love!", March 27, 2003

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This collection delivers exactly what it promises in its title, ten poems to open your heart. In his more recent anthology, RISKING EVERYTHING (2003), editor Roger Housden observes that "suffering is part of how it is on earth; it is an inherent part of the fabric of existence. And if we are lucky, it will break our heart open" (p. xiii). The ten poems Housden has collected here reveal that, even in the midst of life's difficulties, disappointments, and broken dreams, love can bloom. And, as Mary Oliver reflects in the book's opening poem, while there is life without love, it "is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe" (p. 15).

Housden knows his poetry. Great poetry, he says, "is a bridge between our heart and the heart of the world" that allows us to forget ourselves and the world pours in (p. 7). Each of the ten poems collected here approaches love from a different angle: compassionate, romantic, sexual, ecstatic, and transcendent. And each poem encourages us to follow our heart. whatever the consequences. Several poems brought tears to my eyes. As in his previous book in this series, TEN POEMS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE (2002), Housden calls upon his reader to "Wake up and Love!" (p. 12). He again insightfully illustrates each poem with experiences drawn from his own life.

The ten poets collected here include Oliver, Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Naomi Shihab Nye, Denise Levertov, Pablo Neruda, Robert Bly, and Rumi. My only criticism of this book is that, for whatever reason, Housden chose to limit his collection to ten poems, followed "a brief list" of "other poets to open your heart," leaving me to wonder why those poets weren't included here as well.

G. Merritt

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not too keen on love poems, July 13, 2004

By A Customer

but enjoyed this book.

Also enjoyed 'Soul of Mature Adolescence'