Discover how to engage with poetry to support your spiritual practice, leading to more mindfulness, equanimity, and joy. Discover how engaging with poetry can support your spiritual practice--and lead you to more mindfulness and joy. In The Dharma of Poetry, John Brehm shows us how poems can be a source of wisdom and an entry into spiritual practice. He helps us understand how poems open up new ways of thinking, feeling, and being in the world that anyone engaged in spiritual practice--or wishing to live a more mindful life--might want to emulate. Brehm holds open the practice of mindfully entering a poem, with an alertness, curiosity, and open-hearted responsiveness that is very much like the attention we cultivate in meditation. A standalone book that also serves as a companion to the author's acclaimed anthology, The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, this collection of lively, elegantly written essays offers in-depth explorations of twenty remarkable poems. It also offers poetry-related meditations and writing prompts that invite readers to directly engage with the poems and ideas discussed in the book, and expand their own practice of poetry. Additional resources include an essay titled "How to Lead a Poetry and Dharma Discussion" and a list of poetry resources for further exploration.

Author Biography

John Brehm is the author of three books of poetry, Sea of Faith, Help Is on the Way, and No Day at the Beach. His poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Sun, The Gettysburg Review, The Writer's Almanac, Plume, Best American Poetry, The Norton Introduction to Literature, and many others. He is the editor of The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy and the associate editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches poetry and meditation classes in Portland and in Denver, Colorado. He can be found online at johnbrehmpoet.com.