Book description
Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human have introduced many
thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, and have helped
poetry lovers to discover the little known riches of world poetry.
Each anthology in the Staying Alive trilogy has 500 poems to touch the
heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. These books have been
enormously popular with readers, especially as gift books and bedside
companions. The poems - by writers from many parts of the world - have
emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. This new
pocketbook selection of 100 essential poems from the trilogy is a
Staying Alive travel companion (also available as an e-book). As well
as selecting favourite poems from the trilogy - readers' and writers'
choices as well as his own favourites - editor Neil Astley provides
background notes on the poets and poems. This format makes it even
more suitable as a gift book for all those people you're sure would
love modern poetry if only they were familiar with these kinds of
poems. These essential poems are all about being human, being alive
and staying alive: about love and loss; fear and longing; hurt and
wonder; war and death; grief and suffering; birth, growing up and
family; time, ageing and mortality; memory, self and identity; faith,
hope and belief; acceptance of inadequacy and making do…all of human
life in a hundred highly individual, universal poems.
'These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive
celebrates the point of poetry. It's invigorating and makes me proud
of being human' - Jane Campion.
'Truly startling and powerful poems' - Mia Farrow.
'Staying Alive is a book which leaves those who have read or heard
a poem from it feeling less alone and more alive' - John Berger.
'I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is
just as vivid… But this new book feels even more alive - I think it
has a heartbeat' - Meryl Streep.
