John Welwood is a psychotherapist, writer, and teacher specializing in integrating Eastern spiritual wisdom and Western psychology, and has studied Buddhism and Eastern contemplative psychologies for more than forty years. He has published eight books, including Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, and Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart, which was the winner of the Books for a Better Life Award. John's book of poems gives voice to his personal experience of love as well as spiritual realization, insight, awe, and devotion.

Poems of Awakening is an anthology in which poets speak about experiences of living joyfully in the moment and sensing themselves as part of what Walt Whitman calls a vast similitude which interlocks all". The book includes both ancient and modern works by Kabir, Hafiz, Shih-Te, Anna Swir, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings, Wendell Berry, H.D., Mary Oliver, May Sarton, Li-Young Lee, Jane Hirshfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Naomi Shihab Nye and many others.The sections of the book are organized to reflect a spiritual journey:I: My Body EffervescesII: A Deep QuietStillness and LightIII: Now I Become MyselfIV: Healing and RenewalV: May My Heart Always Be Open VI: How A Beautiful Day is SpentVII: The All-Surrounding GracePraise for Poems of Awakening: In todays world, we all need many sources of inspiration, and Betsy Smalls Poems of Awakening is a deep one. The poems, and the feelings they evoke, appeal to the best part of ourselves. Highly recommended for yoga practitioners and anyone who aspires to continue to live with an open, joyousheart in the midst of challenges. Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D, PT, yoga teacher since 1971 and author of eight books including Yogabody: Anatomy, Kinesiology"Poems of Awakening is a carefully chosen collection of inspiring poetry from all over the globe. These poemshelp me remember what is true and real."Danna Faulds, poet and dedicated practitioner of Kripalu Yoga, and author of four books of yoga poetry: Go In and In; One Soul; Prayers to the Infinite; andFrom Root to Bloom As a Senior Kripalu Yoga Teacher I teach that one must first set the tone for each yoga class and findingjust the right reading or poem can at times be a task. Betsy Smalls, Poems of Awakening takes the stress out of finding the right poem for a class or any occasion. Her innovative ?Çÿlinked sets guide the reader to the sense of spirit they are seeking. This is a beautiful work compiled by an effervescent yogini. Maya Breuer, Director, Santosha School of Yoga, In the Kripalu Tradition As a practitioner and teacher of yoga and meditation, it is exactly the kind of book Ive been lookingfor. Leza Lowitz, author of Yoga Poems, Lines to Unfold By Betsy Smalls prodigious collection of poems is a treasure. . . The poems touch the heart, invite self-examinationand welcome profound emotional response. Betsy has organized her anthology in sets of poems that reflect her own spiritual journey, summoning the reader to travel a poetic path of deep awareness and personal growth. Peggy Osna Heller, MSW, Ph.D., poetry therapist and author of Word Arts Collage: A Poetry Therapy Memoir What a joy it is to find so many beautiful, moving, edifying poems in one place! Al Zolynas, poet and editor of The Poetry of Mens Lives Poems of Awakening is a gift to yourself and all those you love and serve. Amy Weintraub, authorof Yoga for Depression and founder of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute

Alex Dimitrov’s third book, Love and Other Poems, is full of praise for the world we live in. Taking time as an overarching structure—specifically, the twelve months of the year—Dimitrov elevates the everyday, and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy, even in despair. These poems are curious about who we are as people and shamelessly interested in hope.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, p, e, i, s, t.

Alan Shapiro is at his most passionate in this collection. A work full of life, jealousy, lust, and romantic abandon, Tantalus in Love begins with the sorrow of a disintegrating marriage, with its anger and suspicion, its hurt and rage, but moves on to celebrate the resilience of love after loss and the awakening glory of an amorous middle age. Reinventing myth and symbol in lyrical portraits of astounding resonance, Shapiro's poems yearn with hesitant love, heated at renewal, fragile but intensified by past experience of love's evanescence and uncertainty.

"Becoming Water" is a manual of sorts. A series of pithy poems inviting the reader to drop beneath the mundane into the ethereal truths of being-ness. The poems are laid out in a linear fashion- LIFE, LOVE, and AWAKENING. First come the wisdom teachings on discernment regarding the practicalities of life. Then on to love- the bridge between the mundane and the infinite. Lastly, the reader is led towards the experiential, a journey to no destination, where everywhere is home and love is arising naturally as an innate element of awakening.

Rumi the Persian poet is widely acknowledged as being the greatest Sufi mystic of his age. He was the founder of the brotherhood of the Whirling Dervishes. This is a collection of his poetry.