Poetry
Stories and literature
idea
Reading books is not just a pleasure: it helps our minds to heal
Through my own struggles and in teaching bibliotherapy to students, I know that books can help to heal minds and hearts
by Peter Leyland
Poetry
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Emily Dickinson and the creative ‘solitude of space’
For the poet Emily Dickinson, sequester was a feminist act of independence: it gave her mental and literal space to write
by Magdalena Ostas
Poetry
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Love’s contradictions: Catullus on the agony of infatuation
Behold a man tortured on the rack, pulled apart by love and hate: how to understand Catullus’s best-known poem
by Armand D’Angour
Rituals and celebrations
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Mourning is a leap to freedom, inviting new dreams of living
Mourning is a leap in the dark, but not into darkness. It’s a leap to freedom that invites us to dream of living once more
by Alexander Hirsch
Stories and literature
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There is nothing so deep as the gleaming surface of the aphorism
The aphorism has been a way to express strong feelings without placing emotional demands on the listener
by Noreen Masud
Poetry
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Learning Nahuatl, the flower song, and the poetics of life
Learning to think and feel in Nahuatl, the poetic language of my ancestors, broke me down and remade me
by David Bowles
Poetry
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Sufi love poetry is in vogue, but few grasp its radical meaning
The Sufi path to love in the poetry of Rumi and ‘Iraqi styles the body as a bridge to the divine in deeply erotic ways
by Matthew Thomas Miller
Music
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Bach’s piano music is intimate precision and Homeric epic in one
A hero on a journey; a circular movement; a melancholy of homecoming: why Bach is an epic poet in the Homeric tradition
by Dan Moller
Friendship
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Horace’s lyrics of friendship offer hope to our troubled world
In the poetics of Horace, friendship is the best way to seek the good life even in the midst of crises beyond our control
by Stephanie McCarter
Poetry
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The long poem is just right for our confounding, fractured age
The long poem is the right literary form for the unmanageable scale, the messy confusion and the epic ambivalence of our age
by Tess Somervell
Civic life
idea
The power of Langston Hughes’s ‘melancholy citizenship’
Langston Hughes’s poetry offers a guide to the sort of melancholy citizenship that can help us weather democratic heartbreak
by Robert L Tsai
Poetry
idea
How poetry casts a spell through the rhythmic magic of metre
Poetry meets the raw needs of our most vulnerable selves in a primal way, with a simple tool: predictable, rhythmic metre
by Annie Finch