A remarkable Pocket Poets anthology of poems from around the world and across the centuries about illness and healing, both physical and spiritual.
From ancient Greece and Rome up to the present moment, poets have responded with sensitivity and insight to the troubles of the human body and mind. Poems of Healing gathers a treasury of such poems, tracing the many possible journeys of physical and spiritual illness, injury, and recovery, from John Donne's "Hymne to God My God, In My Sicknesse" and Emily Dickinson's "The Soul has Bandaged moments" to Eavan Boland's "Anorexic," from W.H. Auden's "Miss Gee" to Lucille Clifton's "Cancer," and from D.H. Lawrence's "The Ship of Death" to Rafael Campo's "Antidote" and Seamus Heaney's "Miracle." Here are poems from around the world, by Sappho, Milton, Baudelaire, Longfellow, Cavafy, and Omar Khayyam; by Stevens, Lowell, and Plath; by Zbigniew Herbert, Louise Bogan, Yehuda Amichai, Mark Strand, and Natalia Toledo. Messages of hope in the midst of pain-in such moving poems as Adam Zagajewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World," George Herbert's "The Flower," Wislawa Szymborska's "The End and the Beginning," Gwendolyn Brooks' "when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story" and Stevie Smith's "Away, Melancholy"-make this the perfect gift to accompany anyone on a journey of healing.

KARL KIRCHWEY is an award-winning American poet, book reviewer, creative writing teacher, translator, arts administrator, and literary curator. He has been a director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, directed the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College, served as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, and is currently a professor and director of the MFA program in creative writing at Boston University.

 Foreword
QUINTUS SERENUS SAMMONICUS “Abracadabra”
 
THE ILLNESS
C. K. WILLIAMS Really
EMILY DICKINSON “The Soul has Bandaged moments –”
MARK STRAND “The sickness of angels is nothing new
ANNE FINCH The Spleen
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Spleen (IV)
WILLIAM COWPER Lines Written During a Period of Insanity
SPENCER REECE From Hartford
CAROL ANN DUFFY The Virgin’s Memo
DOUGLAS DUNN From Disenchantments
D. A. POWELL “they hear the clapping of the bell and are afraid”
GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG From The Light Gray Soil
KAY RYAN Among English Verbs
ROBERT PINSKY Dying
EAVAN BOLAND Anorexic
GWYNETH LEWIS “Talk With a Headache”
SAPPHO TWO TRANSLATIONS (Fragment 31)
THOM GUNN The Man With Night Sweats
C. P. CAVAFY The Funeral of Sarpedon
KEITH DOUGLAS John Anderson
DAVID CONSTANTINE Pity
MAY SWENSON Staring at the Sea on the Day of the Death of Another
 
THE DIAGNOSIS
WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA Clothes
W. H. AUDEN Miss Gee
WILLIAM LOGAN Little Compton
ALISSA VALLES Decision Tree
RAFAEL CAMPO Antidote
GAVIN EWART Sonnet: Intermittent Claudication
JANE KENYON Prognosis
LUCILLE CLIFTON Cancer
LUCILLE CLIFTON 1994
C. K. WILLIAMS Diagnosis
NICOLE SEALEY medical history
J. D. MCCLATCHY My Mammogram
ADRIENNE RICH Power
TOM PAULIN Under the Eyes
JULIA ALVAREZ “Are we all ill with acute loneliness”
EMILY DICKINSON “A Wounded Deer – leaps highest–”
 
THE REMEDY
ROBERT PINSKY ABC
VASKO POPA Before the Game
VASKO POPA After the Game
MASAOKA SHIKI Eight Haiku
ZBIGNIEW HERBERT Breviary
MARCELLUS EMPIRICUS From De Medicamentis
JANE KENYON From Having It Out With Melancholy
C. P. CAVAFY Melancholy of Jason Kleander, Poet in Kommagini, AD 595
NATALIA TOLEDO The Flower That Drops Its Petals
MIROSLAV HOLUB “Although a poem arises . . .’
MIROSLAV HOLUB “Although a poem is . . .”
ADRIENNE RICH Calibrations
GREG DELANTY The Green Room
MARK STRAND “When after a long silence one picks up the pen”
LOUISE GLUCK A Slip of Paper
C. P. CAVAFY Kleitos’ Illness
JOHN DONNE Hymne to God My God, In My Sicknesse
D. H. LAWRENCE From The Ship of Death
ADA LIMON The Raincoat
MARY JO SALTER Hot Water Bottle
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU A Receipt to Cure the Vapors
KARL KIRCHWEY Blood and Light
ALISSA VALLES Pain Fellow
RAFAEL CAMPO From Phone Messages on Call
KATE DANIELS Support Group
AIMEE GRUNBERGER Chemotherapy
J. D. MCCLATCHY From Radiation Days
MAX RITVO Poem To My Litter
JOHN DOWLAND Come, Heavy Sleep
DONALD HALL Deathwork
OMAR KHAYYAM From The Ruba’iyat
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Invitation to the Voyage
MARGARET ATWOOD Up
STEVIE SMITH Away, Melancholy
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS “My own heart let me more have pity on”
 
THE HEALING
LUCILLE CLIFTON blessing the boats
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI Try to Praise the Mutilated World
WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA The End and the Beginning
RUDAKI On the Death of the Amir’s Father
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Song: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”
DYLAN THOMAS A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
EAVAN BOLAND Quarantine
ADRIENNE RICH From a Survivor
ROSANNA WARREN For Chiara
DEBORA GREGER Black Silk
SEAMUS HEANEY Miracle
CHARLOTTE MEW On the Asylum Road
LOUISE BOGAN Evening in the Sanitarium
SYLVIA PLATH Tulips
ROBERT LOWELL Home After Three Months Away
EMILY DICKINSON “After great pain, a formal feeling comes–”
HENRI COLE Morning Glory
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Carrion Comfort
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON From In Memoriam
EMILY DICKINSON “They say that ‘Time assuages’–”
KAY RYAN Retroactive
GWENDOLYN BROOKS when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story
CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ Mittelbergheim
EMILY BRONTE My Lady’s Grave
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI Remember
JOHN MILTON Methought I saw
RICHARD WILBUR The House
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW The Cross of Snow
VICTOR HUGO “Tomorrow as soon as the countryside pales with dawn”
DOUGLAS DUNN The Kaleidoscope
TONY HARRISON From Long Distance
GRACE SCHULMAN Celebration
JAMES MERRILL Farewell Performance
WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA Cat in an Empty Apartment
W. H. AUDEN Talking to Myself
THOM GUNN The Wound
TOBIAS KIRCHWEY To My Dissector
JANE KENYON Notes from the Other Side
DON PATERSON The Lover
MIROSLAV HOLUB Crush Syndrome
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA Facing It
SEAMUS HEANEY Chorus from The Cure at Troy
KATE DANIELS Molecules
ABBA KOVNER He Stood There
ALISSA VALLES Discharge
DANEZ SMITH little prayer
GEORGE HERBERT The Flower
LES MURRAY Spring
WALLACE STEVENS The Sun This March
DEREK MAHON Everything Is Going To Be All Right
YEHUDA AMICHAI The Amen Stone
H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) “O Heart, small urn”
CHARLOTTE MEW Not for that City
GWENDOLYN BROOKS From The Second Sermon on the Warpland