How to fly (in ten thousand easy lessons) Poetry
Book - 2020
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 deser...ts, and thousand-year-old beech trees--all speaking to the daring project of belonging to an untamed world beyond ourselves.
- Subjects
- Genres
- Free verse
Poetry - Published
-
New York :
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
[2020]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- First edition
- Physical Description
- ix, 111 pages ; 22 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [109]-111).
- ISBN
- 9780062993083
- 1. How to Fly
- How to Drink Water When There Is Wine
- How to Have a Child
- How to Cure Sweet Potatoes
- How to Shear a Sheep
- How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)
- How to Give Thanks for a Broken Leg
- How to Survive This
- How to Do Absolutely Nothing
- How to Lose That Stubborn Weight
- How to Get a Divorce
- How to Be Married
- How to Knit a Sweater (a Realist's Prayer)
- How to Love Your Neighbor
- How to Be Hopeful
- 2. Pellegrinaggio
- I. Pellegrinaggio
- II. The Roman Circus
- III. On the Piazza
- IV. Into the Abruzzo
- V. In Torricella, Finding Her Mother's House
- VI. Circumnavigating Torricella Peligna
- VII. Pompeii
- VIII. At the Top of Mount Vesuvius
- IX. Swimming in the Bay of Naples
- X. On the Train to Sicily
- XI. Monreale
- XII. Lemon-Orchard Blue
- XIII. The Road to Erice Is Paved with Intentions
- XIV. Palermo
- 3. This Is How They Come Back to Us
- Burying Ground
- This Is How They Come Back to Us
- Passing Death
- The Visitation
- Long Division
- My Great-Grandmother's Plate
- Thank-You Note for a Quilt
- My Mother's Last Forty Minutes
- 4. Walking Each Other Home
- By the Roots
- My First Derby Party
- Snow Day
- Six Women Swimming Naked in the Ocean
- Courtship Dance on Playa Luria
- Will
- Creation Stories
- Meadowview Elementary Spelling Bee
- Blow Me-
- After
- Walking Each Other Home
- 5. Dancing with the Devil
- Thief
- Dancing with the Devil: Advice for the Female Poet
- Cage of Heaven
- Insomniac Villanelle
- My Afternoon with The Postman
- 6. Where It Begins
- Where It Begins
- 7. The Nature of Objects
- Ghost Pipes
- The Nature of Objects
- Come August, a Seven-Day Rain
- Ephemera
- Love Poem, with Birds
- Swimming in the Wamba
- Cradle
- Down Under
- The Hands of Trees
- Mussel, Minnow
- Matabele
- Great Barrier
- Forests of Antarctica
- Notes