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| Ten Poems to Open Your Heart | 
 enlarge | Author: Roger Housden
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $1.26
You Save: $15.69 (93%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 139451
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 1400045630
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.8193543
EAN: 9781400045631
ASIN: 1400045630
Publication Date: January 7, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Cover wear and may contain some marks or writing. Keen Northwest ships in 2 business days or less. Refunds for any reason if item returned within 30 days of shipment.
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Product Description
Ten Poems to Open Your Heart is a book devoted to love: to the intimacy of personal love and lovemaking, to a loving compassion for others, and to the love that embraces both this world and the next. This new volume from Roger Housden features a few of the same poets as his extraordinarily moving Ten Poems to Change Your Life, such as Mary Oliver and Pablo Neruda, along with contributions from Sharon Olds, Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, and others. Any one of the ten poems and, indeed, any one of Housden’s reflections on them, can open, gladden, or pierce your heart.
Through the voices of these ten inspiring poets, and through illustrations from his own life, Housden expresses the tenderness, beauty, joys, and sorrows of love, the presence of which, more than anything else, gives human existence its meaning.
As Housden says in his eloquent introduction, “Great poetry happens when the mind is looking the other way and words fall from the sky to shape a moment that would normally be untranslatable. . . . When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.”
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| Customer Reviews:
 "Wake up and Love!" March 27, 2003
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
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
If I could give it 10 stars I would July 7, 2004
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
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.
 Not too keen on love poems July 14, 2004
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
but enjoyed this book.Also enjoyed 'Soul of Mature Adolescence'
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