Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds

By Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce

Soul Food is a feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit. Drawn from many traditions, ranging from Rumi, Kabir and Blake, to Rilke, Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan, this wide-ranging selection includes enormously varied work by celebrated contemporary poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver, as well as by many lesser-known writers from all periods and places. The anthology opens with a series of poems on human life and spiritual sustenance, starting with Rumi: ‘This being human is a guest house. / Each morning a new arrival…’ The poems which follow explore many ways of keeping body and soul together, offering food for thought on knowing yourself, living with nature, who or what is God… All are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to searchers and non-believers. Soul Food shows how poetry can help feed our hunger for meaning in times of spiritual starvation. Soul Food includes Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Coleman Barks, William Blake, John Burnside, Paul Celan, Chuang-Tzu, Emily Dickinson, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jane Hirshfield, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kabir, Jane Kenyon, Lal Ded (Lalla), DH Lawrence, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, Czeslaw Milosz, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, Amrita Pritam, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, St John of the Cross, Edith Södergran, Anna Swir, Wislawa Szymborska, Shinkichi Takahashi, RS Thomas, and many others…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781780375595

Neil Astley

Neil Astley is the editor of Bloodaxe Books which he founded in 1978. His books include many anthologies, most notably those in the Staying Alive series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011) and Staying Human (2020), along with three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets and In Person: World Poets. He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, and has published two poetry collections, Darwin Survivor and Biting My Tongue, as well as two novels, The End of My Tether (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award), and The Sheep Who Changed the World. He was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books in 1995; is a patron and past trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival; and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. He lives in the Tarset valley in Northumberland.

Book preview

SOUL FOOD

Nourishing poems for starved minds

Edited by Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce

Soul Food is a feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit. Drawn from many traditions, ranging from Rumi, Kabir and Blake, to Rilke, Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan, this wide-ranging selection includes enormously varied work by celebrated contemporary poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver, as well as by many lesser-known writers from all periods and places.

The anthology opens with a series of poems on human life and spiritual sustenance, starting with Rumi: ‘This being human is a guest house. / Each morning a new arrival…’ The poems which follow explore many ways of keeping body and soul together, offering food for thought on knowing yourself, living with nature, who or what is God… All are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to searchers and non-believers. Soul Food shows how poetry can help feed our hunger for meaning in times of spiritual starvation.

Soul Food includes Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Coleman Barks, William Blake, John Burnside, Paul Celan, Chuang-Tzu, Emily Dickinson, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jane Hirshfield, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kabir, Jane Kenyon, Lal Ded (Lalla), DH Lawrence, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, Czesław Miłosz, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, Amrita Pritam, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, St John of the Cross, Edith Södergran, Anna Swir, Wisława Szymborska, Shinkichi Takahashi, RS Thomas, and many others…

cover detail from

Still Life with Lemons, Orange and a Rose (1633)

by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664)

the norton simon foundation

SOUL FOOD

NOURISHING POEMS FOR STARVED MINDS

EDITED BY NEIL ASTLEY & PAMELA ROBERTSON-PEARCE

Contents

TITLE PAGE

Fernando Pessoa – ‘To be great, be whole…’

William Blake – fromAuguries of Innocence

1.   GUEST HOUSE

Rumi – The Guest House

Chuang-tzu – When the Shoe Fits

Amrita Pritam – Daily Wages

Kabir – The Boat

Rainer Maria Rilke – Buddha in Glory

Jane Hirshfield – The Weighing

Jane Kenyon – Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

Denise Levertov – The Fountain

Wendell Berry – Breaking

Wendell Berry – To Know the Dark

Thomas Merton – In Silence

Anna Akhmatova – ‘Everything has been plundered…’

Jane Hirshfield – Burlap Sack

Paul Celan – Corona

Rainer Maria Rilke – Archaic Torso of Apollo

2.   CARPE DIEM

Mary Oliver – The Summer Day

Nina Cassian – Temptation

Denise Levertov – Living

X.J. Kennedy – September Twelfth, 2001

Robert Frost – Carpe Diem

Thich Nhat Hanh – The Good News

3.   THE JOURNEY

Rainer Maria Rilke – God Speaks to Each of Us

Rumi – Chickpea to Cook

Al Young – How the Rainbow Works

Mary Oliver – Wild Geese

Langston Hughes – Mother to Son

Mary Oliver – The Journey

Edward Field – A Journey

David Constantine – Musicians in the Underground

Stanley Kunitz – The Layers

Rumi – Who Makes These Changes?

Portia Nelson – Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Mary Oliver – from West Wind [2]

David Wagoner – Lost

Cynthia Huntington – Nothing

Anna Swir – My Body Effervesces

Dana Gioia – Nothing Is Lost

Rainer Maria Rilke – Sometimes a Man

Brendan Kennelly – Begin

Marie Howe – My Dead Friends

Denise Levertov – Talking to Grief

Jane Kenyon – Let Evening Come

Mary Oliver – When Death Comes

4.    KNOWING YOURSELF

J.W. von Goethe – Ecstatic Longing

Czesław Miłosz – Three poems from The World

Jane Kenyon – Happiness

Naomi Shihab Nye – Kindness

Thomas Merton – Song for Nobody

Paul Celan – Speak You Too

Rumi – A Zero-Circle

Emily Dickinson – ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes…’

Wisława Szymborska – Four a.m.

Fleur Adcock – Things

Jean Toomer – I Sit in My Room

César Vallejo – Anger

Edith Södergran – Hope

Kenji Miyazawa – Strong in the Rain

Chairil Anwar – Me

Edith Södergran – Triumph of being…

Derek Walcott – Love after Love

Paul Celan – Mandorla

Maya Angelou – Still I Rise

5.    BELIEVING BODY AND SOUL

Robert Bly – The Third Body

Kapka Kassabova – Mirages

Ikkyu – My Real Dwelling

M.K. Joseph – A Riddle: Of the Soul

Wisława Szymborska – A Few Words on the Soul

Mary Oliver – Some Questions You Might Ask

William Stafford – How to Regain Your Soul

Shiki – Haiku

John Glenday – Concerning the Atoms of the Soul

Rumi – Unmarked Boxes

Pauline Stainer – The Ringing Chamber

Chase Twichell – Horse

Kabir – A Place to Sit

Rumi – Everything You See

Kabir – The Swing

6.   WHAT PRAYER?

Imtiaz Dharker – Prayer

Carol Ann Duffy – Prayer

Gillian Allnutt – What you need to know for praying

James Wright – Trying to Pray

Galway Kinnell – Prayer

Joy Harjo – Eagle Poem

Carolyn Forché – Prayer

7.   TALKING TO GOD

John Berryman – from Eleven Addresses to the Lord [1]

David Scott – The Priest in the Pulpit

D.H. Lawrence – Demiurge

Susan Stewart – Let me tell you about my marvelous god

Kaylin Haught – God Says Yes

Kerry Hardie – Sheep Fair Day

Jaan Kaplinski – from Summers and Springs

Dennis O’Driscoll – Missing God

Anna Kamienska – The Other World

Fiona Farrell – Credo

Molly Peacock – Why I Am Not a Buddhist

Jay Wright – Meta-A and the A of Absolutes

D.H. Lawrence – Pax

8.   THE BUD STANDS FOR ALL THINGS

Galway Kinnell – Saint Francis and the Sow

George Herbert – The Flower

Gerard Manley Hopkins – The Windhover

Tua Forsström – Amber

Langston Hughes – The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Anna Hajnal – That’s All?

John Burnside – The Myth of the Twin

Shinkichi Takahashi – Destruction 

9.   INNER LIGHT

Anna Swir – The Same Inside

David Constantine – Miranda on the Tube

R.S. Thomas – The Bright Field

Jane Hirshfield – Tree

Anna Swir – To That Which Is Most Important

Emily Dickinson – ‘I stepped from plank to plank…’

Denise Levertov – Variation on a Theme by Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke – A Walk

Izumi Shikibu – ‘Although the wind…’

Dogen – On the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

Lal Ded – ‘The soul, like the moon…’

Kabir – The Time Before Death

Ernst Stadler – The Saying

Richard Eberhart – The Eclipse

Dana Gioia – The End of a Season

St John of the Cross –‘Upon a gloomy night…’

Zoé Karélli – Presences

Antonio Machado – ‘Last night while I was sleeping’

Keith Althaus – Poem

Else Lasker-Schüler – Reconciliation

Shinkichi Takahashi – Words

Antonio Machado – from Proverbs and Songs

Tung-shan –‘If you look for the truth outside yourself’

Rainer Maria Rilke – Whoever grasps

Ryokan – ‘In all ten directions of the universe…’

William Blake – Eternity

NOTES ON THE POETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX OF WRITERS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

COPYRIGHT

To be great, be whole…’

To be great, be whole: don’t exaggerate

Or leave out any part of you.

Be complete in each thing. Put all you are

Into the least of your acts.

So too in each lake, with its lofty life,

The whole moon shines.

[14 February 1933]

FERNANDO PESSOA

translated from the Portuguese

by

richard zenith

FROM

Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

WILLIAM BLAKE

1.   GUEST HOUSE

The Guest House

This being human is a guesthouse.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

RUMI

translated from the Persian

by

coleman barks

with

john moyne

When the Shoe Fits

Ch’ui the draftsman

Could draw more perfect circles freehand

Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth

Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind

Was meanwhile free and without concern

With what he was doing.

No application