Poems to Live by: In Troubling Times

In this all-new sequel to the Beacon bestseller Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, editor Joan Murray has once again gathered an astonishing group of poems that speak to our personal and shared concerns in a troubled time.

Poems to Live By in Troubling Times features works carefully selected and deftly organized to help guide us through the complexities of our current situation. Included are poems that speak to our anxiety and terror; rally our hope and courage; warn us of complacency and complicity; stir us to action and compassion; lead us to question our leaders and politicians; move us to meditation and prayer; urge us to confront war and violence; and give us hope for peace and justice.

Readers will find wisdom to sustain them as they face difficulties in their individual lives or confront our common contemporary predicament. These are not poems that provide easy answers or overheated rhetoric but poems that speak directly and deeply to the soul, from the most important and celebrated poets of our era.

Joan Murray is editor of Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times and The Best of Pushcart Poetry. A National Poetry Series Open Competition winner, she is author of Queen of the Mist, Dancing on the Edge, and Looking for the Parade. Her poems have also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Ms., The Nation, and Best American Poetry and have been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition. Murray lives in Old Chatham, New York.

Joan Murray is a National Poetry Series Winner, Poet-in-Residence at the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany, author of three prize-winning books of poetry: Queen of the Mist, Looking for the Parade, and The Same Water, editor of Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, and general editor of the forthcoming Best of Pushcart Poetry.