Books

Poems of Connection and Joy

Edited by James Crews, Foreword by Danusha Laméris

Publication: April 2022

The Path to Kindness, offers more than 100 deeply felt and relatable poems from a diverse range of voices including well-known writers Julia Alvarez, Marie Howe, Ellen Bass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alberto Ríos, Ross Gay, and Ada Limón, as well as new and emerging voices. Featured Black poets include January Gill O’Neil, Tracy K. Smith, and Cornelius Eady. Native American poets include Kimberly Blaeser, Joy Harjo (current U.S. Poet Laureate), and Linda Hogan. The collection also features international voices, including Canadian poets Lorna Crozier and Susan Musgrave. Presented in the same perfect-in-the-hand format as How to Love the World, the collection includes prompts for journaling and exploration of selected poems, a book group guide, bios of all the contributing poets, and stunning cover art by award-winning artist Dinara Mirtalipova. A foreword by Danusha Laméris, along with her popular poem "Small Kindnesses," is also included. 

By James Crews 

Publication: March 23, 2021

More and more people are turning to poetry as an antidote to divisiveness, negativity, anxiety, and the frenetic pace of life. How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope offers readers uplifting, deeply felt, and relatable poems by well-known poets from all walks of life and all parts of the US, including inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, and others. The work of these poets captures the beauty, pleasure, and connection readers hunger for. How to Love the World, which contains new works by Ted Kooser, Mark Nepo, and Jane Hirshfield, invites readers to use poetry as part of their daily gratitude practice to uncover the simple gifts of abundance and joy to be found everywhere. With pauses for stillness and invitations for writing and reflection throughout, as well as reading group questions and topics for discussion in the back, this book can be used to facilitate discussion in a classroom or in any group setting. 

By Danusha Laméris

Publication: 2020

"Bonfire Opera, Danusha Lameris’ ravishing second collection of poems, lives up to its title and then some. In melodic and sumptuous lines, she considers desire, sorrow, beauty and death. This is a collection you will want to keep close, ‘a reminder to begin, again, by listening carefully with the body’s rapt attention.'" -Ellen Bass

"No experience is more fulfilling than reading the work of a writer who is a master of her craft—of feeling like the book you are immersed in is an entire world. This is what it is like reading Danusha Laméris’ Bonfire Opera. Everything is alive in these poems, even loss. Even death. In these finely crafted lyrics, worms, berries, skin, hawks, dirt and desire exist and even thrive in a symbiotic relationship that is a model for a new way of thinking. If a book can be smart and funny and dark and wise and vulnerable and beautiful all at the same time, this one is. In one of her best poems, Laméris writes, ‘This is what I’ve made here, a garden, a feast.’ That’s for sure. Bonfire Opera is a feast you’ll want to devour and a garden that will never stop yielding." -Dean Rader

By James Crews

Publication: April 9, 2020

Monarch

The butterfly does not break free triumphant.
Once it claws through the chrysalis,
it stands there shivering, new wings aching
as they slowly fill with blood. It must keep
its tiny eyes shut tight at first against
the brightness and shimmer of a world
it has never seen before—not like this.
It must listen until the soul’s voice whispers:
The flowers are waiting. Leave the skin
of the old life far behind. Open your eyes
and give in to the blue air that will carry you
everywhere you need to go.

By Danusha Laméris

Publication: 2014

"Danusha Laméris writes with definitive, savoring power – in perfectly well-weighted lines and scenes.  Her poems strike deeply, balancing profound loss and new finding, employing a clear eye, a way of being richly alive with appetite and gusto, and a gift of distilling experience to find its shining core.  Don't miss this stunning first book."  -Naomi Shihab Nye

 "This book of motherhood, memory, and elegiac urgency crosses borders, cultures, and languages to bring us the good news of being alive.  With language clear as water and rich as blood, The Moons of August offers a human communion we can all believe in.  Reckoning with and grieving for the past as they claim the future, these poems are wise, direct, and fearless.  "What's gone / is not quite gone, but lingers," Laméris reminds us.  "Not the language, but the bones / of the language.  Not the beloved, / but the dark bed the beloved makes / inside our bodies."   -Dorianne Laux