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Average Customer Rating: 
Ten Poems to Change Your Life >
Customer Review #1:
 Ten Times a Momentary Trembling
I need no convincing to read poetry. It is second nature to me... if not first in line. There is this quick, pointed injection of life that poetry offers that lengthier prose cannot. An image. A snap of sound. A gut punch. A sudden miracle. A flash of light. A surprise. Housden has recognized this and, with this book, presents his own miracle of found poetry to the general reader. He has chosen ten poems by ten very different authors out of ten different planes of existence (time, space, culture) and presented them here to - more than not, I think - the mostly uninitiated. Certainly these are not complex poems. No argument on their quality. They are definitely not the ten that I would choose (although one or two of them might indeed make it onto my list also)... but they dont have to be! Poetry is, after all, as personal and intimate as making love. Indeed, it is making love... the mind in the most intimate relationship with life in all its juices and flavors. Housdens choices range from Whitmans enthused "Song of Myself" (this one would make it onto my list also)... to the simple pleasures of "Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda... to the inspirational "The Journey" by Mary Oliver... to the old age reborn to new age "Zero Circle" by Rumi... to the deliciously sensual "Last Gods" by Galway Kinnell... to the always impressive "For the Anniversary of My Death" by W.S. Merwin... and more. Each poem is followed by Housdens essay elaborating his choice, the poems effect on him, its life-changing (at least for him) message. He kindles the poetry flame, and that is a wonderful thing. Thousands of, 20 best websites to download free ebooks.
For those who are reasonably well acquainted with poetry, there is little new here. The authors should all be familiar ones, several by now considered classics. There are Pulitzer Prize winners along with those appearing in smaller literary presses. None of that, I suspect, was part of Housdens criteria in his choices. He appears to have chosen poems for their ability to stop time, for just a moment, and cause some kind of metamorphosis, an epiphany, a momentary trembling of the earth beneath his reading feet. While a few of these choices left me unmoved, as a whole, I enjoyed the book and sharing in his perspective while keeping my own. Revisiting Whitman was a nostalgia of youthful enthusiasm, for instance. Whitman showed us that poetry need not be stodgy or stiff with rhyme and iambic pentameter. While both Neruda and Rumi left me cool, and Machado had only a mild effect... the encounter of "Last Gods" by Galway Kinnell... mm, left me purring. Never underestimate the power of the written word, indeed. Not only is it more powerful than the sword, but nothing can compete... no trash magazine, no cheap celluloid... with the eroticism of such well chosen words. Kinnells poem evokes ripples of sensation, sweet sweet, savory, leaving all the senses tingling... but also stimulates the most erogenous zone of all: the mind. It is not shy. It is not embarrassed to be precise in its description. Yet here is a most wonderful example of the difference between erotic art... and pornography. One being of beauty, uplifting, lasting... while the other is ugly and base. One enriches while the other degrades. In his essay following the poem, Housden writes:
"...pornography divorces body from soul and turns body into a thing, which can be used like any other thing for profit in the marketplace. Pornography is a caricature of the erotic; it can only exist by demanding anonymity, and substituting fantasy for relationship. Without relationship, there is no soul. There is only sensation, for its own sake; and sensation is no more than skin deep. Sensation on its own - however orgasmic - fails to deliver the goods. To skim the surface of life ultimately leaves us on our own, and predictably, lonely. One reason we seem to be such a pleasure-hungry society is that we are habitually looking for it in all the wrong places."
As Housden says of Kinnell (and oh yes, I am looking up this poet on my next trip to the library), this slim volume of applause to poetry, its word-play and its word-ecstasy and its word-power, is one of immersion into the experience. "Great poetry," Housden says, "can alter the way we see ourselves. It can change the way we see the world... suddenly you see your own original face there; suddenly find yourself blown into a world full of awe, dread, wonder, marvel, deep sorrow, and joy.... poetry bids us... to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind; it calls to us, like the wild geese, from an open sky."
Whether these ten poems call to us, some of these ten, or another ten of our own choosing... poetry is an experience worthy of immersion. Housdens enthusiasm for the literary form is contagious. That enthusiasm, taken to be ones own, that understanding of the power of the word, is what can change lives.
Ten Poems to Change Your Life >
Customer Review #2:
Wow, it stirred my soul!
All my life Ive thought to myself, "I dont DO poetry!" This book caught my eye just because of its beautifully simple cover, so I picked it up and began to read. From his opening line in the Introduction, "Good poetry has the power to start a fire in your life," I was as mesmerized by his writing and explanation of the selected poems as I was by the poetry itself. This little book has taught me to NOT take a poem, chew it up and spit it out, but to take little bites, small morsels at a time, savor them, roll them around on the tongue a bit enjoying each little piece, then move onto the next bit, which has left me wanting for more! Thank you for this introduction to poetry in my life! I loved this book!
Ten Poems to Change Your Life >
Customer Review #3:
 Ten Poems to Enjoy, and Ten Passages to Annoy
Roger Housden is a blowhard.There, I said it. His book is the epitome of arrogant spirituality gone wrong.
Housdens book is a mere outlet for his own revelation, and does very very little for a reader who thinks for himself. Housden claims that the book can change the life of the religious, and even those without religion. Yet he ends his introduction with prayer-like words. "May these poems set free your unlived dreams [...] may you wake up one morning in the new life." I expected to see an "Amen" after that. I wonder if "the new life" is so blatant an allegory to heaven that most readers will pick it up, or if people kept reading mindlessly? The quotes around "the new life" open it up for such an allegory, but my guesses are fans of the book werent paying attention.
I do give Housden credit though. He picked some fine poems (poems he admits he picked out of "personal prejudice"). But while the poems are good (there are many better, too), his analyzations of the poems are half-way decent to laughable at best. He forms the analyzations, like a University Freshman English student, to his own theories, rather than taking into account other possible readings. Read another way, Machados "Last Night as I Was Sleeping" could be an ironic blemish on Housdens book. "Marvelous error!" could easily be interpreted to mean that the dream is a marvelous escapist thought while wholly wrong (an error).
This book might change your life for a day or two, IF you are Christian (Housden talks about Jesus being the light of the world, despite his claiming that non-religious people can exsperience life change with this book), and IF you allow yourself to be guided step-by-step through Housdens biography and convoluted interpretations. If you think for yourself in regards to spirituality and have any sort of ability in literary analysis, the poems will be enjoyable at best, and Housdens interludes will be PAINFUL.
But hey, the cover is nice.
(2 stars for the poem selections. 0 for Housden.)
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