About The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives
The Wonder Paradox offers a lively, practical, and transcendent roadmap to meaning and connection through poetry.
Religion once formed the rhythms and structures of society: marking time with calendars, carving out space for contemplation, creating connection, reinforcing legacy and morality. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show.
So where shall we find our magic? How do we celebrate milestones? Which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can’t be said? The answer, Jennifer Michael Hecht–the historian, poet, and bestselling author of Doubt–tells us, is poetry.
In twenty chapters built from years of questions and conversation with those looking for an authentic and meaningful life, Hecht offers ways to excavate the useful aspects of tradition and to replace what no longer feels true. Through cultures and poetic wisdom from around the world–Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Issa, Tagore, Frost, Szymborska, Angelou, and others–she blends literary criticism with spiritual guidance rooted in the everyday. Linking our needs to particular poems, she helps us better understand those needs, ourselves, and poetry.
Our capacity for wonder is one of the greatest joys of being human; The Wonder Paradox celebrates that instinct and that yearning. Like Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, it promises to inspire generations of readers.
Detail
Complete Title: The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 368
Publication Time: March 7, 2023
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374292744
ISBN13: 9780374292744
About Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, philosopher, and author.
Reviews The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives
Reading_ Tamishly
Thank you, Farrar Straus and Giroux, for the advance reading copy.I find this book quite unique.From the blurb, I expected this book to be in poetry format throughout mulling on various topics of life…
Megan Bell
In this warm and wise invitation to a poetry-enriched life, atheist poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht shows us how to gather our own collection of poems for daily practices, holidays, celebrat…
Mark
I will steal a notion from the first line of Jennifer Michael Hecht’s preface to her delightful book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. She says…
Elisabeth
e-ARC obtained via Edelweiss+An absolutely beautiful book for those seeking to have words to lean on as well as understanding the ones that most do. Covering religion, art and science, modern and anci…
Kat
This is a wonderful book for poetry lovers, the poetry curious, atheists, agnostics, and anyone looking for some secular contemplation or nondenominational spiritual support. Each chapter takes on a t…
Erica Greene
I am rating this book solely on the content and not my personal opinion because although for the right person this would be a fabulous read, it’s just not for me. I agree with Lisa’s comment that this…
Kaz Ogino
Everything I enjoy in a book about poetry; questions and wonder of life, poetic techniques and keen analysis about selected exemplary poems… and lots of selected extraordinary poems.My second readin…
Po Po
Inspirational. Motivated me to write my own poetry…
Kennedy
3.5Overall, I found this book to be useful and unique— finding poems for events, most that are usually considered religiously secular, and using this to lead personal values and collective insight…