Poems of Healing

From ancient Greece and Rome (Sappho, Marcellus Empiricus) to the current Covid 19 crisis (Eavan Boland´s ´Quarantine´), poets have responded with sensitivity and insight to the troubles of the human body and mind. Poems of Healing is a small treasury of their words, illuminating many different experiences of illness, injury and convalescence, from John Donne´s ´Hymne to God My God, In My Sicknesse´ to Thom Gunn´s ´The Man with Night Sweats´; from Anne Finch´s ´Spleen´ to Jane Kenyon´s ´Prognosis´; from Emily Dickinson´s ´The Soul has Bandaged moments´ to Seamus Heaney´s ´Miracle´. Here are poems from around the world, by Baudelaire, Hugo, Rudaki and Cavafy; by Masaoka Shiki, Miroslav Holub and Zbigniew Herbert. Shakespeare and Milton; Tennyson and Emily Bronte; Charlotte Mew, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, Tony Harrison and Carol Ann Duffy are all present at the sickbed. Messages of hope in the midst of pain - in such masterpieces as Adam Zagajewski´s ´Try to Praise the Mutilated World´, Wislawa Szymborska´s ´The End and the Beginning´ and Stevie Smith´s ´Away, Melancholy´ - make this a perfect gift for anyone on the road to healing.