Download or read book Five Meditations on Death written by François Cheng and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophical discussions on the ways that death makes life meaningful and sacred • Reveals how being conscious of death gives our fate its full meaning, inviting the reader to contemplate life in the light of their own death • Examines the author’s experience of ancestor worship in his native China and the beliefs that underlie it • Explains how death is a transition in a longer living process not visible from the modern “black and white” view of life and death • Translated by award-winning translator Jody Gladding Born from intimate discussions with friends, these five meditations on death from poet-philosopher François Cheng examine the multiple ways the prospect of death significantly shapes life and is, in fact, what makes life meaningful and sacred. Written at the age of 84, in the twilight of life, these meditations each approach the human understanding of death from different yet intertwined perspectives, effortlessly returning to certain themes and ideas, questioning them again more deeply with each passing. The author shows that death is a transition in a longer living process not visible from the modern “black and white” view of life and death. He examines his experience of ancestor worship in his native China and the beliefs that underlies it: Our ancestors are alive in another form, that what is living can never die and what is dead has never lived. Cheng looks at the consequences of a world that has abandoned the sacred and avoids the mention of death, a world now blindly staggering through the chaos it has created, yet which can return to balance if we once again embrace the essential sacredness of life as well as death. Throughout these five heart-baring meditations, Cheng invites us to contemplate life in the light of our own death. He reveals that to be conscious of death gives our fate its full meaning. Our death is an integral part of our great adventure in becoming. For if birth is a seed, then death is the fruit--the final sacred product of a life well lived.

Download or read book I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love written by Mahogany L. Browne and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long form poem is a practice of poetics in joy, gratitude, sadness, resilience and pain. This literary work serves as a practice of self-reflection and accountability in the wake of the prison system. This poem is dirge work acknowledging unjust atrocities, but reveling in our human resilience.

Download or read book Praying Through Grief written by Kate Kirkpatrick and published by Augsburg Books. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. William Penn With classic texts from the Bible and other prayers and poems from around the world, Praying through Grief is the perfect gift for anyone mourning the loss of a loved one. This heartwarming collection also serves as an indispensable resource for those working with the bereaved--from pastors and chaplains to funeral directors, doctors, or family and friends. Organized for relaxed, easy perusing, the writings can be read through randomly, by select chapter, or from front to back. Though no one can put the intense grief of losing a loved one into words, the right wisdom at the right time can provide comfort, understanding, healing, and relief.

Download or read book Dying Modern written by Diana Fuss and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dying Modern, one of our foremost literary critics inspires new ways to read, write, and talk about poetry. Diana Fuss does so by identifying three distinct but largely unrecognized voices within the well-studied genre of the elegy: the dying voice, the reviving voice, and the surviving voice. Through her deft readings of modern poetry, Fuss unveils the dramatic within the elegiac: the dying diva who relishes a great deathbed scene, the speaking corpse who fancies a good haunting, and the departing lover who delights in a dramatic exit. Focusing primarily on American and British poetry written during the past two centuries, Fuss maintains that poetry can still offer genuine ethical compensation, even for the deep wounds and shocking banalities of modern death. As dying, loss, and grief become ever more thoroughly obscured from public view, the dead start chattering away in verse. Through bold, original interpretations of little-known works, as well as canonical poems by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wright, and Sylvia Plath, Fuss explores modern poetry's fascination with pre- and postmortem speech, pondering the literary desire to make death speak in the face of its cultural silencing.

Download or read book Earthly Meditations written by Robert Wrigley and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-26 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of his generation's most accomplished poets, Robert Wrigley is renowned for his ironic, powerful, and lucid style as well as his ability to fuse narrative and lyrical impulses. Earthly Meditations features nineteen original poems alongside a collection of sixty-one poems chosen from his first six books.

Download or read book Love Remember written by Malcolm Guite and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses forty poems from across the centuries that express the universal experience of loss and reflects on them in order to draw out the comfort, understanding and hope they offer. Some of the poems will be familiar, many will be new, but together they provide a sure companion for the journey across difficult terrain. Some of Malcolm’s own poetry is included, written out of his work as a priest with the dying and the bereaved and giving to the volume a powerful authenticity. The choice of forty poems is significant and reflects an ancient practice still observed in some European and Middle Eastern societies of taking extra-special care of a bereaved person in the forty days following a death – our word quarantine come from this. They explore the nature and the risk of love, the pain of letting go and look toward glimpses of resurrection.

Download or read book Zen Poems written by Peter Harris and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1999-03-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appreciation of Zen philosophy and art has become universal, and Zen poetry, with its simple expression of direct, intuitive insight and sudden enlightenment, appeals to lovers of poetry, spirituality, and beauty everywhere. This collection of translations of the classical Zen poets of China, Japan, and Korea includes the work of Zen practitioners and monks as well as scholars, artists, travelers, and recluses, ranging from Wang Wei, Hanshan, and Yang Wanli, to Shinkei, Basho, and Ryokan.

Download or read book Obit written by Victoria Chang and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2020 Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 NPR's Best Books of 2020 National Book Award in Poetry, Longlist Frank Sanchez Book Award After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In Obit, Chang writes of “the way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking.” These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died (“civility,” “language,” “the future,” “Mother’s blue dress”) and the cultural impact of death on the living. Whereas elegy attempts to immortalize the dead, an obituary expresses loss, and the love for the dead becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living. "When you lose someone you love, the world doesn’t stop to let you mourn. Nor does it allow you to linger as you learn to live with a gaping hole in your heart. Indeed, this daily indifference to being left behind epitomizes the unique pain of grieving. Victoria Chang captures this visceral, heart-stopping ache in Obit, the book of poetry she wrote after the death of her mother. Although Chang initially balked at writing an obituary, she soon found herself writing eulogies for the small losses that preceded and followed her mother’s death, each one an ode to her mother’s life and influence. Chang also thoughtfully examines how she will be remembered by her own children in time."—Time Magazine

Download or read book 33 Meditations on Death written by David Jarrett and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AS FEATURED ON BBC RADIO 4 'Start the Week' : 'very moving - brilliant and profound' "Brilliant - a grimly humorous yet humane account of the realities of growing old in the modern age." - Henry Marsh "A remarkably likeable guide to a grisly subject ... daunting, yet ultimately life-affirming" - Independent What is a good death? How would you choose to live your last few months? How do we best care for the rising tide of very elderly? This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end. Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about death. He writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having. And it is a call to arms for us to make radical changes to our perspective on 'the seventh age of man'. - More praise for 33 Meditations on Death: "This book will stay with you." - Derren Brown "Bursting with empathy, common sense and humour." - Professor Dame Sue Black

Download or read book Japanese Death Poems written by and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.

Download or read book Meditations in an Emergency written by Frank O'Hara and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1967 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Grove Press, 1957.

Download or read book Inside the Wave written by Helen Dunmore and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone. These poems are concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead - the underworld and the human living world - and the exquisitely intense being of both. They possess a spare, eloquent lyricism as they explore the bliss and anguish of the voyage. Inside the Wave, Helen Dunmore's tenth and final poetry book, was her first since The Malarkey (2012), whose title-poem won the National Poetry Competition. Her final poem, 'Hold out your arms', written shortly before her death and not included in the first printing of Inside the Wave, was added to all subsequent printings. Her posthumous retrospective, Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 (2019), covers ten collections she published over four decades up to and including Inside the Wave.

Download or read book The Prophet written by Kahlil Gibran and published by Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of poetic essays written in English, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is full of religious inspirations. With the twelve illustrations drawn by the author himself, the book took more than eleven years to be formulated and perfected and is Gibran's best-known work. It represents the height of his literary career as he came to be noted as ‘the Bard of Washington Street.’ Captivating and vivified with feeling, The Prophet has been translated into forty languages throughout the world, and is considered the most widely read book of the twentieth century. Its first edition of 1300 copies sold out within a month.

Download or read book Sentenced to Life written by Clive James and published by Picador. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his new collection of poems - several of which have already become famous before their book publication - Clive James looks back over an extraordinarily rich life with a clear-eyed and unflinching honesty. There are regrets, but no trace of self-pity in these verses, which - for all their open dealings with death and illness - are primarily a celebration of what is treasurable and memorable in our time here. Again and again, James reminds us that he is not only a poet of effortless wit and lyric accomplishment: he is also an immensely wise one, who delights in using poetic form to bring a razor-sharp focus to his thought. Miraculously, these poems see James writing with his insight and energy not only undiminished but positively charged by his situation: Sentenced to Life represents a career high point from one of the greatest literary intelligences of the age.

Download or read book My Bright Abyss written by Christian Wiman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate meditation on the consolations and disappointments of religion and poetry

Download or read book The Great Fires written by Jack Gilbert and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JOYCE'S MOTTO has had much fame but few apostles. Among them, there has been Jack Gilbert and his orthodoxy, a strictness that has required of this poet, now in the seventh decade of his severe life, the penalty of his having had almost no fame at all. In an era that puts before the artist so many sleek and official temptations, keeping unflinchingly to a code of "silence, exile, and cunning" could not have been managed without a show of strictness well beyond the reach of the theater of the coy. The "far, stubborn, disastrous" course of Jack Gilbert's resolute journey--not one that would promise in time to bring him home to the consolations of Penelope and the comforts of Ithaca but one that would instead take him ever outward to the impossible blankness of the desert--could never have been achieved in the society of others. What has kept this great poet brave has been the difficult company of his poems--and now we have, in Gilbert's third and most silent book, what may be, what must be, the bravest of these imperial accomplishments.

Download or read book Death written by D. IRVINE and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-31 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death - Composed From The Shadows possesses poems on the darkness that awaits us all. Words have been combined, creating alluring visuals that will take you on a journey beyond the shadows. D. J. Irvine has forged a seductive book that will read differently every time you gaze inside. If you have questions about Death or would like to read poetry entwined with philosophy, this book needs to be in your collection. Death Poems This book of death poems combines an assortment of rhyme, free verse, and philosophical poems to complete this second anthology by D. J. Irvine. The poetry within these pages is written in different styles, lengths and scenes to help take you off into a different dimension. The eBook version is composed using text only, while the paperback is filled with beautiful photography. Both versions have a very different feel to capture the reader's imagination. As you read this book, Death! Will sit next to you, stand at the edge of your bed or take your hand when you sleep and show you what awaits in the afterlife. As you finish this book, your state of consciousness will climb a new mountain; into this moment, we define as reality. A Little About The Author As I type these words onto this blank canvas, flashes of high definition pictures project through the front of my mind. My four sons faces, smile with delight and remind me of my journey on this tiny rock we call Earth. They have helped me carve out most of the pansophy that awaits your lucid being. My wife is a lush-emerald-glen found in the highlands of Scotland because she can break any storm that ignites around the family home. Emma is the peacekeeper, carer and nurtures our growing minds with love and tranquillity. If things seem tough or we need a moment of serenity, you can find us walking the vanilla beaches of Norfolk. We let the sea crash between our toes while gorging on fish and chips in a moment where time seems infinite. Growing up in a town called Wellingborough gave me a wealth of life experience I still use to this very day. I'm the oldest brother of five siblings, and we grew up in a little council house. We learned to stick together, help out, cook, clean, get ourselves to school and enjoy each others company. The laughs and tears we all shared helped fabricate this book into existence. My brothers and sisters look up to me, mainly because I'm the oldest, and I always had to set the rules around the house. My door is still open, and I keep in touch and talk to them all, primarily through all the highs and lows of life. With this being my second book on Amazon; I look forward to all the criticism, reviews, remarks, suggestions and outrageous profanities. Thank you for the purchase, and I hope you enjoy the impenetrable obscurities within.