In this all-new sequel to the Beacon bestseller Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, editor Joan Murray has once again gathered an astonishing group of poems that speak to our personal and shared concerns in a troubled time.
Poems to Live By in Troubling Times features works carefully selected and deftly organized to help guide us through the complexities of our current situation. Included are poems that speak to our anxiety and terror; rally our hope and courage; warn us of complacency and complicity; stir us to action and compassion; lead us to question our leaders and politicians; move us to meditation and prayer; urge us to confront war and violence; and give us hope for peace and justice.
Readers will find wisdom to sustain them as they face difficulties in their individual lives or confront our common contemporary predicament. These are not poems that provide easy answers or overheated rhetoric but poems that speak directly and deeply to the soul, from the most important and celebrated poets of our era.
Joan Murray is editor of Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times and The Best of Pushcart Poetry. A National Poetry Series Open Competition winner, she is author of Queen of the Mist, Dancing on the Edge, and Looking for the Parade. Her poems have also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Ms., The Nation, and Best American Poetry and have been featured on NPR's Morning Edition. Murray lives in Old Chatham, New York.

She then turns inward to examine herself as an artist and a woman. In the final section she celebrates the courage that allows us to be death's great opponents.

It was regarded as the ultimate stunt. In 1901, a barrel plunged over the brink of Niagara Falls. On the outside was painted Queen of the Mist. Inside was a destitute 63-year-old teacher. This is the story of Annie Taylor, the woman who performed this perilous feat in the hope of reversing her fortunes. But, as this poetic narrative reveals, society did not know what to do with a mature, self-possessed heroine. Annie Taylor, as an older woman was rejected, exploited and finally eclipsed by the man who repeated her stunt ten years later.