How to Love the World Poems of Gratitude and Hope

What the world needs now is this inspiring poetry anthology—featuring poems from today's most renowned poets.

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. These poets capture the beauty, pleasure, and connection readers hunger for. 

How to Love the World 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.

Includes a reading group guide that can be used to facilitate discussion in a classroom or in any group setting.

James Crews is the editor of the best-selling anthology, How to Love the World, which has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post, and is the author of four prize-winning collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. His poems have been reprinted in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and The Christian Century, and in former US poet laureate Ted Kooser’s weekly newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry,” and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. He worked with Ted Kooser on “American Life in Poetry,” which reaches millions of readers across the world. Crews holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a PhD in writing and literature from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He teaches poetry at the University at Albany and lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont. 
Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.

Acknowledgments
Foreword, Ross Gay
The Necessity of Joy, James Crews
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Hope
Ted Kooser, Dandelion
Barbara Crooker, Promise
Amanda Gorman, At the Age of 18 - Ode to Girls of Color
Dorianne Laux, In Any Event
Laura Grace Weldon, Astral Chorus
Garret Keizer, My Daughter's SInging
David Romtvedt, Surprise Breakfast
Ron Wallace, The Facts of Life
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Fifteen Years Later, I See How It Went
Kathryn Hunt, The Newborns
Christen Pagett, Shells
Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Bus Stop
January Gill O'Neil, Hoodie
Terri Kirby Erickson, Angel
Todd Davis, Thankful for Now
Reflective Pause: The Joy of Presence
Barbara Crooker, Autism Poem: The Grid
Diana Whitney, Kindergarten Studies the Human Heart
Gail Newman, Valentine's Day
Abigail Carroll, In Gratitude
Michelle Wiegers, Held Open
David Graham, Listening for Your Name
Heather Swan, Another Day Filled with Sleeves of Light
Annie Lighthart, A Cure against Poisonous Thought
Mary McCue, Forgiveness
Heather Lanier, Two Weeks after a Silent Retreat
Reflective Pause: The Kingdom at Hand
Jane Hirshfield, Today, When I Could Do Nothing
Laura Ann Reed, Red Thyme
Laura Foley, The Once Invisible Garden
James Crews, Down to Earth
Freya Manfred, Old Friends
Brad Peacock, Let It Rain
Molly Fisk, Against Panic
Naomi Shihab Nye, Over the Weather
Paula Gordon Lepp, Notions
Ellen Bass, Any Common Desolation
Reflective Pause: Returning to the World
Mark Nepo, Language, Prayer, and Grace
Jane Hirshfield, The Fish
Patricia Fargnoli, Reincarnate
Linda Hogan, Innocence
Farnaz Fatemi, Everything Is Made of Labor
Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Apple Blossoms
Nancy Miller Gomez, Growing Apples
Danusha Lameris, Aspen
Margaret Hasse, With Trees
Kim Stafford, Shelter in Place
Heather Newman, Missing Key
Michael Kiesow Moore, Climbing the Golden Mountain
Laura Foley, To See It
Jacqueline Jules, Unclouded Vision
Danusha Lameris, Improvement
Reflective Pause: Grateful for Small Victories
Jack Ridl, After Spending the Morning Baking Bread
Wally Swist, Radiance
Kristen Case, Morning
Ross Gay, Wedding Poem
Jehanne Dubrow, Pledge
Angela Narciso Torres, Amores Perros
Noah Davis, Mending
Penny Harter, In the Dark
Nathan Spoon, A Candle in the Night
Francine Marie Tolf, Praise of Darkness
Judith Chalmer, An Essay on Age
Ted Kooser, Easter Morning
Andrea Potos, The Cardinal Reminds Me
Marjorie Saiser, When Life Seems a To-Do List
Lahab Assef Al-Jundi, Moon
Crystal S. Gibbins, Because the Night You Asked
Rob Hunter, September Swim
Joyce Sutphen, What to Do
William Stafford, Any Morning
Reflective Pause: Pieces of Heaven
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, How It Might Continue
Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms
Jessica Gigot, Motherhood
Sarah Freligh, Wondrous
Cathryn Essinger, Summer Apples
Lynne Knight, Third Year of My Mother's Dementia
Heather Swan, Rabbit
Dale Biron, Laughter
January Gill O'Neil, In the Company of Women
Alice Wolf Gilborn, Leaning to the Light
Andrea Potos, I Watched an Angel in the Emergency Room
Alberto Rios, When Giving Is All We Have
Albert Garcia, Offering
Alison Luterman, Too Many to Count
Marjorie Saiser, If I Carry My Father
George Bilgere, Weather
Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Work
Reflective Pause: The Joy of Making
Danusha Lameris, Goldfinches
Connie Wanek, The Lesser Goldfinch
Tony Hoagland, The Word
Barbara Crooker, Tomorrow
Cynthia White, Quail Hollow
Laura Grace Weldon, Compost Happens
Joan Mazza, Part of the Landscape
Andrea Potos, Essential Gratitude
Reflective Pause: The Gratitude List
Laura Foley, Gratitude List
Katherine Williams, The Dog Body of My Soul
Katie Rubenstein, Scratch, Sniff
Mary Elder Jacobsen, Summer Cottage
Jane Kenyon, Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer
Grace Bauer, Perceptive Prayer
Patricia Fontaine, Sap Icicles
Lucille Clifton, the lesson of the falling leaves
Ted Kooser, A Dervish of Leaves
James Crews, Winter Morning
Tracy K. Smith, The Good Life
Marjorie Saiser, Thanksgiving for Two
Reflective Pause: The Feast of Each Moment
Jeffrey Harrison, Nest
Ellen Bass, Getting into Bed on a December Night
Lisa Coffman, Everybody Made Soups
James Crews, Darkest before Dawn
Brad Peacock, Rosary
Julie Murphy, To Ask
Tess Taylor, There Doesn't Need to Be a Poem
Amy Dryansky, Wingspan
Joy Harjo, Eagle Poem
Terri Kirby Erickson, What Matters
Mark Nepo, In Love with the World
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
Poet Biographies
Credits