Poetry Rx: How 50 Inspiring Poems Can Heal and Bring Joy To Your Life

Poetry to Heal, Inspire and Enjoy

Poetry Rx presents 50 great poems as seen through the eyes of a renowned psychiatrist and New York Times bestseller. In this book, you will find insights into love, sorrow, ecstasy and everything in between: Love in the moment or for a lifetime; love that is fulfilling or addictive; when to break up and how to survive when someone breaks up with you.

Separate sections deal with responses to the natural world, and the varieties of human experience (such as hope, reconciliation, leaving home, faith, self-actualization, trauma, anger, and the thrill of discovery). Other sections involve finding your way in the world and the search for meaning, as well as the final stages of life.

In describing this multitude of human experiences, using vignettes from his work and life, Rosenthal serves as a comforting guide to these poetic works of genius. Through his writing, the workings of the mind, as depicted by these gifted writers speak to us as intimately as our closest friends.

Rosenthal also delves into the science of mind and brain. Who would have thought, for example, that listening to poetry can cause people to have goosebumps by activating the reward centers of the brain? Yet research shows that to be true.

And who were these fascinating poets? In a short biosketch that accompanies each poem, Rosenthal draws connections between the poets and their poems that help us understand the enigmatic minds that gave birth to these masterworks. Altogether, a fulfilling and intriguing must-read for anyone interested in poetry, the mind, self-help and genius.

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE Loving and Losing

Chapter One Is There an Art to Losing? One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Chapter Two Can Love Transform You? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Chapter Three The Heart versus the Mind Pity me not because the light of dayby Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter Four Love in the Moment Lullaby by W. H. Auden

Chapter Five When Love Fades Failing and Flyingby Jack Gilbert

Chapter Six Getting Over a Breakup I: Acceptance Why so pale and wan fond lover?by Sir John Suckling

Chapter Seven Getting Over a Breakup II: Reclaiming Yourself Love after Love by Derek Walcott,

Chapter Eight Declaring Your Love Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? by William Shakespeare

Chapter Nine Consoled by Love Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes by William Shakespeare

Chapter Ten In Praise of the Marriage of True Minds Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare

Chapter Eleven Loss of a Loved One Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone (Funeral Blues) by W. H. Auden

Chapter Twelve Will I Ever Feel Better? Time Does Not Bring Relief by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter Thirteen Love Remembered When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

Chapter Fourteen Love after Death Remember by Christina Rossetti,

PART TWO That Inward Eye

Chapter Fifteen Transcendence in Nature Daffodils by William Wordsworth

Chapter Sixteen The Memory of Daffodils Miracle on St. David’s Day by Gillian Clarke

Chapter Seventeen Transcendence in Body and Mind Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (excerpt) by William Wordsworth

Chapter Eighteen The Power of Dark and Light There’s a certain Slant of light by Emily Dickinson

Chapter Nineteen In Praise of Diversity Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Chapter Twenty A Plea to Save the Natural World Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Chapter Twenty-One The Importance of Being Needed Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Chapter Twenty-Two The Choices We Make The Road Not Takenby Robert Frost

Chapter Twenty-Three The Force of Longing Sea Feverby John Masefield

Chapter Twenty-Four Finding Hope in Nature The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

PART THREE The Human Experience

Chapter Twenty-Five The Power of Hope “Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson

Chapter Twenty-Six Welcoming Your Emotions The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks

Chapter Twenty-Seven The Healing Power of Reconciliation Out beyond Ideas by Jalaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)

Chapter Twenty-Eight Leaving Home Traveler, there is no road by Antonio Machado Translated by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney

Chapter Twenty-Nine And Those You Leave Behind Letter to My Mother by Salvatore Quasimodo Translated by Jack Bevan

Chapter Thirty The Importance of Self-Actualization On His Blindness by John Milton

Chapter Thirty-One The Power of Faith Psalm 23A Psalm of David

Chapter Thirty-Two The Thrill of Discovery On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats

Chapter Thirty-Three The Enduring Thrill of the Moment High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr

Chapter Thirty-Four The Long Reach of Trauma The Sentence by Anna Akhmatova Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Chapter Thirty-Five The Danger of Anger A Poison Tree by William Blake

PART FOUR A Design for Living and the Search for Meaning

Chapter Thirty-Six Principles for a Good Life Polonius’ Advice to Laertesby William Shakespeare

Chapter Thirty-Seven Remaining Steady through Life’s Ups and Downs If by Rudyard Kipling

Chapter Thirty-Eight Never Give Up Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Chapter Thirty-Nine Putting One Foot in Front of the Other The Waking by Theodore Roethke

Chapter Forty Should You React or Proact? Waiting for the Barbariansby Constantine CavafyTranslated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Chapter Forty-One It’s the Journey That Matters Ithaka by Constantine Cavafy Translated by Edmund Keeley

Chapter Forty-Two Hold On to Your Dreams Dreams by Langston Hughes

PART FIVE Into the Night

Chapter Forty-Three Should You Just Go for It? An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats

Chapter Forty-Four Or Should You Be Careful? Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

Chapter Forty-Five Dying Too Soon We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

Chapter Forty-Six Aging by Degrees I Know I Am Getting Old by Wendell Berry

Chapter Forty-Seven The Critical Importance of Communication Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Chapter Forty-Eight Should You Rage? Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas

Chapter Forty-Nine Or Is it Time to Go Gently? Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

Chapter Fifty I Did Not Die! Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye

© 2026 G&D Media (Lydbog): 9781722555009

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 10. juli 2026