Poems for Happiness edited by Gaby Morgan: book review

Poems for Happiness (2019) is a collection of about 100 poems, all exploring the art of happiness.

It is divided into 7 sections: Happy Thought; Glory be to God for Dappled Things; I Sing of Brooks, of Blossoms, Birds and Bowers; Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth; Friendship is Love Without his Wings; He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven; and The Shape of a Good Greyhound.

The collection includes various artists from the known – such as Rudyard Kipling and William Wordsworth – to the unknown, such as Anon!

The ‘human experience of happiness’ can be short or long, incidental or purposefully sought, based on luck or good choices, or the result of love, freedom, food, work, leisure, religion, beauty, shining things, nature, friendships, and everything in between.

Classic poem titles include:

‘May the Road Rise Up to Meet You’ - Anon

‘Shut Not Your Doors to Me, Proud Libraries’ – Walt Whitman

‘I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose’ – Emily Dickinson

‘Dog’ – Harold Monro

‘Aint I a Woman?’ – Sojourner Truth and Erlene Stetson

‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’ – Walt Whitman

‘Camomile Tea’ – Katherine Mansfield

This is a great collection to shine a light on poetry’s skill at capturing the elusiveness of happiness and its comfort for all.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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