ENWR 1510: Writing about Joy

In Dancing with Joy, Roger Housden assembles 99 poems from 69 poets that celebrate the many colors of joy. Anything can be a catalyst for joy, these poems reveal. For Wislawa Szymborska, the catalyst is a dream; for Robert Bly, being in the company of his ten-year-old son; for Gerald Stern, it is a grapefruit at breakfast; for Billy Collins, a cigarette. Dancing with Joy includes English and Italian classical and romantic works; early Chinese and Persian verse; and poets from Chile, France, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and India, plus a range of contemporary American and English poets. Whether inspiration is what you need, or an affirmation of what is already joyful in life,

One hundred of the most evocative modern poems on joy, selected by an award-winning contemporary poet. See list of poets included in Virgo record under Contents

"Renia White's debut poetry collection pushes against state-sanctioned authority and societal thought while ruminating on Black joy."

This new selection of poems is a powerful celebration of the work of Nikki Giovanni, spanning over fifty years of writing and activism, from the revolutionary fervour of 1968 to the ongoing urgency of Black Lives Matter. Arranged chronologically over a half-century of American life, these works speak from and to the Black experience, with love, struggle, family, dreams, anger and Black joy at the centre. Here is the lifetime's work of a legendary poet at her essential, profound and most inspiring best-

Some Glad Morning, Barbara Crooker's ninth book of poetry, teeters between joy and despair, faith and doubt, the disconnect between lived experience and the written word. Primarily a lyric poet, Crooker is in love with the beauty and mystery of the natural world, even as she recognizes its fragility. But she is also a poet unafraid to write about the consequences of our politics, the great divide. She writes as well about art, with ekphrastic poems on paintings by Hopper, O'Keeffe, Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and others. Many of the poems are elegaic in tone, an older writer tallying up her losses. Her work embodies Bruce Springsteen's dictum, "it ain't no sin to be glad we're alive," as she celebrates the explosion of spring peonies, chocolate mousse, a good martini, hummingbirds' flashy metallics, the pewter light of September, Darryl Dawkins (late NBA star), saltine crackers.  While she recognizes it might all be about to slip away, "Remember that nothing is ever lost," she writes, and somehow, we do.

In this dazzling new collection, Alice Walker offers over sixty new poems to incite and nurture contemporary activists. Hailed as a "lavishly gifted writer," Walker imbues her poetry with evocative images, fresh language, anger, forgiveness, and profound wisdom. Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she "distills struggles, crises, and tragedies down to bright, singing lessons in living with awareness and joy.

What can people do together that we can't do alone? What can we discover in ourselves only by way of other people? Gabrielle Civil's Experiments in Joy celebrates black feminist collaborations and solos in essays, letters, performance texts, scores, images, and more. Following her explosive debut Swallow the Fish, Civil now documents her work with From the Hive, No. 1 Gold, and Call & Response--whose collaborative Call inspired the title. The book also features her solo encounters with artists and writers, ancestors and audiences. Here you will find black girlhood, grief, ghosts, girls in their bedrooms, lots of books, dancing, reading, falling in love, fighting back, and flying. With lots of heart and the help of her friends, Civil keeps reckoning with performance, art and life.

It is often said that the best things in life come in small packages; anyone in search of proof need look no further than the stories in this collection from the acclaimed author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series: brief, utterly engaging tales that offer lasting surprise and delight, accompanied by charming illustrations by Iain McIntosh. In Tiny Tales, Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness, and happiness in thirty short stories accompanied by thirty witty cartoons designed by Iain McIntosh, McCall Smith's longtime creative collaborator.

See titular short story "The Anything Box," part of this collection. Also available from Internet Archive (may need to created free account first to borrow): https://archive.org/details/TheAnythingBox/page/n5/mode/2up?q=joy

19 short stories, including "The Joy of Living": "'The Joy of Living,' published in 1954, was one of the first stories to address the emotional attachments of a robot to humans, and to examine the complexities of such a relationship in a futuristic world."

In case you want to choose a different "delight" then what is already being read for class.

An invigorating, continuously surprising book about the serious nature of laughter. Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter's revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir's experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied. Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina's morphine addiction, Freud's un-Freudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers, to "Not Jokes," Abu Ghraib, Frantz's negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, and how poetry can wake us up. At the center of the book, however, is the author's relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions--frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking--are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from one's true self and hinting at ways one might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.

The twenty-one essays in David Searcy's debut collection are captivating, daring--and completely unlike anything else you've read before. Forging connections between the sublime and the mundane, this is a work of true grace, wisdom, and joy. Expansive in scope but deeply personal in perspective, the pieces in Shame and Wonder are born of a vast, abiding curiosity, one that has led David Searcy into some strange and beautiful territory, where old Uncle Scrooge comic books reveal profound truths, and the vastness of space becomes an expression of pure love. Whether ruminating on an old El Camino pickup truck, those magical prizes lurking in the cereal boxes of our youth, or a lurid online ad for "Sexy Girls Near Dallas," Searcy brings his unique blend of affection and suspicion to the everyday wonders that surround and seduce us. In "Nameless," he ruminates on spirituality and the fate of an unknown tightrope walker who falls to his death in Texas in the 1880s, buried as a local legend but without a given name. "The Hudson River School" weaves together Google Maps, classical art, and dental hygiene into a story that explores--with exquisite humor and grace--the seemingly impossible angles at which our lives often intersect. And in "An Enchanted Tree Near Fredericksburg," countless lovers carve countless hearts into the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak tree, leaving their marks to be healed, lifted upward, and, finally, absorbed. Haunting, hilarious, and full of longing, Shame and Wonder announces the arrival of David Searcy as an essential and surprising new voice in American writing.

'I love that I don't need to feel ashamed at my happiest, and that my joy no longer needs to go through a filter before it's ready to see the light of day' Laura Kate Dale and 15 other autistic authors from around the globe, open the door and invite you in to explore and celebrate the candid, uplifting and intimate moments of autistic joy. More often than not autism is viewed through the lens of struggles and challenges - Stories of Autistic Joy is here to shift that narrative and turn the spotlight onto the unique joys that shape autistic people's lives. Joy comes in all shapes and sizes: loving relationships, fantasy writing, building soft forts, echolalia, peaceful solitude, Pokemon, stimming freely and unmasking for the first time. So, step inside and explore the diverse and heart-warming stories from around the world and celebrate what makes experiencing autistic joy so special.