The Last Best Book — Ten Poems to Change Your Life

— being an occasional series, when a book really strikes me —

I’m not sure how I discovered Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden (Harmony Books/Random House, 2001), but to whomever first brought it to my eyes, my thanks. This is the first in a series of Ten Poems books, all compiled by Housden — an Englishman now living near San Francisco — with marvelous commentary.  Of course, it helps that he starts with “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, from Dream Work, given to me by my dear friend, poet Kelly Elizabeth Allen, shortly after it was published in 1986. But Housden also gives us less familiar poems, all deeply inspiring — and a little bit surprising.

(FTC disclosure: I got this book from the library and the author and I have never met.)