Essential Poems From the Staying Alive Trilogy

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 OCo by writers from many parts of the world OCo 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 OCo readersOCO and writersOCO choices as well as his own favourites OCo 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 youOCOre 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 doOC all of human life in a hundred highly individual, universal poems.aOCyThese poems distil the human heart as nothing elseOC Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. ItOCOs invigorating and makes me proud of being humanOCO OCo Jane Campion.OCyTruly startling and powerful poemsOCO OCo Mia Farrow.OCyStaying Alive is a book which leaves those who have read or heard a poem from it feeling less alone and more aliveOCO OCo John Berger.OCyI love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vividOC But this new book feels even more alive OCo I think it has a heartbeatOCO OCo Meryl Streep."