One Hundred Poems That Capture the Meaning of Joy
In his new anthology, Joy: 100 Poems, the writer Christian Wiman takes readers through the ostensible ordinariness of life and reveals the extraordinary. “We ate, and talked, and went to bed, / And slept. It was a miracle,” Donald Hall writes in “Summer Kitchen.” Through a luminous array of poetry and prose, Wiman captures joy in contemporary contexts. These works span from the 20th century to the present day, and as a result, the real, the specific, and the familiar shine through: “She’s slicing ripe white peaches / into the Tony the Tiger bowl,” Sarah Lindsay describes in “Small Moth.”
Wiman’s anthology is a reminder that if the news can bring people closer to the suffering of others, literature can alone can make writers and readers apprehensive: How can one speak of that feeling at a moment when it seems that anger, confusion, and pain are everywhere?
