"Deep down in the human spirit there is a reservoir of courage. It’s always available, always waiting to be discovered."

So writes Pema Chodron in the epilogue of her book, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, a collection of wisdom gained from her Buddhist teachers. It is, as Pema is known for producing, an attempt at honoring her beloved instructors, passing along their teachings as a means of healing a beautiful, broken world. Yet it becomes, as her work often does, a uniquely important rendering of timeless peace-based practices into a language the modern-day Westerner will be able to quickly understand.

“We are all a mixture of aggression and loving-kindness, hard-heartedness and tender open-heartedness, small-mindedness and forgiving open mind. We are not a fixed, predictable, static identity that anyone can point to and say, ‘You are always like this. You are always the same.’

Life’s energy is never static. It is as shifting, fluid, changing as the weather. Sometimes we like how we’re feeling, sometimes we don’t. Then we like it again. Then we don’t. Happy and sad, comfortable and uncomfortable alternate continually. This is how it is for everyone.”

— Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

In the book, Pema utilizes various stories - the myth of Ulysses, for example, and the painful ending of her second marriage - to illustrate the emotional ebb and flow of life. She instructs her reader to open their mind and heart to new wisdom drawn from ancient practices, and with little difficulty the reader is able to follow her. Her Western experiences woven into her Eastern beliefs, along with her passionate and earnest championing of the enduring goodness of the world, is just the surface of what makes an unlikely Buddhist nun – an American woman who didn't turn to Buddhism until 37 years and 2 divorces impacted her life – such a powerful, transcendent teacher.

“Buddhism encourages us never to reject what is problematic but rather to become very familiar with it. And so it is here: we are urged to acknowledge shenpa, see it clearly, experience it fully – without acting out or repressing.”

— Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

Pema does some of her most profound teaching as she turns the Buddhist principle of shenpa over her relatable vernacular. She explores the nature of human habit within the context of shenpa, the trigger that so often hooks us onto negative feelings and makes self-destructive behavior a reflexive habit. Where we respond to shenpa with fear, anxiety, blame, anger, and self-desctructive patterns, the Buddhist practice instead encourages adopting an awareness – an open, kind curiosity – toward the things that trigger difficult emotions, and even the emotions themselves. Pema walks the reader through the practices of acknowledging shenpa through sitting meditation, compassionate abiding, and the meditative tonglen.

“When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when the whole thing is just not working and we don’t know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world.”

— Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

As is her way, Pema connects these practices to everyday Western life by relating stories of people she has known and met, from criminals on death row to the Dalai Lama. In this, she shines her light onto the connectedness of humanity, illuminating the very sameness which she encourages us to see in each other as a tool for practicing compassion. And compassion for others, she points out, begins with compassion for ourselves. This is epitomized by the beautiful Sanskrit word maitri, which Pema informally translates to mean "unconditional friendliness to oneself".

Often, Pema reinforces the Buddhist belief that good and bad, happy and sad are all made of the same clear, unobstructed energy and space, and that our reaction to them is what creates difficulty and suffering. While we are only human in our patterns of either acting out or repressing, Pema encourages the alternative approach of staying, of leaning into the shenpa and dropping the storyline. The storyline, she explains, is the inner-dialogue we all know well which is encouraging us to act out or repress (which is to say, encouraging either anger or sadness).

“Learning to stay is the basis for connecting with natural warmth; it is the basis for loving ourselves and also for compassion. The more you stay present with yourself, the more you realize what all of us are up against. Just like me, other people feel pain and want it to go away. Just like me, they go about this in a way that only makes matters worse.”

— Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

With their focus on stillness, mindfulness, and letting go, the practices Pema puts forth in this book are a soul-filling glimpse at one of the world’s most beautiful and benevolent spiritual philosophies; and her intelligent, open-hearted rendering of the Buddhist language welcomes anyone to listen, to practice, and to grow. With her simple words on courage at the beginning of the epilogue, Pema summarizes all that’s needed to apply these practices in our lives not just to develop maitri – compassion for ourselves as a means toward compassion for others – but also so that we might contribute, as an enlightened society, to the ultimate survival and beautification of the natural world around us.

“So, we start by making friends with our experience and developing warmth for our good old selves. Slowly, very slowly, gently, very gently, we let the stakes get higher as we touch in on more troubling feelings. This leads to trusting that we have the strength and good-heartedness to live in this precious world, despite its land mines, with dignity and kindness. With this kind of confidence, connecting with others comes more easily, because what is there to fear when we have stayed with ourselves through thick and thin? Other people can provoke anything in us and we don’t need to defend ourselves by striking out or shutting down. Selfless help, helping others without an agenda, is the result of having helped ourselves. We feel loving toward ourselves and therefore we feel loving toward others. Over time all those we used to feel separate from become more and more melted into our heart.”

— Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

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“So I am finding him still at this stage, and I expect still to be finding him when I’m 80, as a welcome and at the same time endearingly infuriating interlocutor. I can never quite let him go...”

— Malcolm Guite, Yearning for a Far-Off Country (C.S. Lewis and His Circle)

Although C.S. Lewis was the author of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia series, he was many other men besides. A professor, an intellectual, a theologian, a philosopher, a brother, a husband, and a Christian, Lewis contributed much to the world in varying ways throughout his life. Largely considered one of the most influential thinkers of modern Christianity, he brought his profound theological insights into his fiction writing; and likewise, the imagination that gave birth to the wonders of Narnia served as his greatest resource as a philosopher. To study Lewis, whether as an academic or a devoted reader, is to uncover a world of new ideas, much in the same way the Pevensie children discovered a new world at the other end of a magical wardrobe. A sense of wonder and a fathomless imagination were the foundations of Lewis’s great work. Whether conjuring unforgettable characters or unraveling in his way the complexities of faith, Lewis was tireless in his celebration of curiosity and his reverence of beauty.

“Alongside Lewis the cool-headed thinker we find a very different style of thinker - a man who is aware of the power of the human imagination, and the implications of this power on our understanding of reality. Perhaps one of the most original aspects of Lewis’s writing is his persistent and powerful appeal to the religious imagination.”

— Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis, Defender of the Faith (C.S. Lewis and His Circle)

Oxford was, of course, a significant part of Lewis’s life and it continues to hold an impenetrable connection to his legacy. It was here that the Inklings first began to meet, and it was the setting wherein tremendous ideas took shape - ideas of literary, academic, and theological importance. Born of Lewis's inspiration, the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society has for decades been an important institution in the continued study of Lewis and his ideas, as well as a tribute to the lives and works of those who shared his intellectual circle. By sustaining the ideas of the Inklings, the society stands as a guide for generations of thinkers whose visions would blossom under such influence.

This year the society released C.S. Lewis and His Circle, a new book which adds to the extensive library of publications exploring Lewis's ideas and insights. C.S. Lewis and His Circle contains many previously unpublished talks from influential speakers, giving Lewis enthusiasts a new chance to witness what the study of Lewis is like in the writer’s own home, so to speak.

“The great feature of his teaching was his obvious delight in and enthusiasm for many of the books that we were studying, and his ability to communicate this enthusiasm. He had wide taste: Writers he loved best included Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Jonson, but he was also an enthusiastic champion of lesser known writers... He was helped in this advocacy, and indeed in all his teachings, by his ability to quote from memory many of the best passages. If you were his pupil, you had the enjoyment of an anthology of the best and most interesting passages, splendidly declaimed in his rich and powerful voice, with its slight and to my mind rather delightful northern Irish accent.”

— George Sayer, Recollections of C.S. Lewis (C.S. Lewis and His Circle)

The book takes off on an academic bent with lectures and essays on Lewis as a philosopher and theologian. For those whose interest in Lewis stems from his works of fiction, these talks offer a way for readers to challenge themselves with some of the more intricate details of ideas which are at the root of perhaps all of Lewis's literary works. As a result, these talks on his theological work will serve to broaden one's experience of Lewis as a poet and novelist, which brings us into the book's next collection of essays: that of his literary background and experiences.

“There is hardly a page of the Chronicles in which some incident does not have behind it a profound truth.”

— Walter Hooper, It All Began with a Picture: The Making of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis and His Circle)

The literary talks are wonderful and invigorating, from Malcolm Guite's delightful observations on Lewis as a poet to Tom Shippey's examination of Lewis's diaries when he came up to Oxford's Magdalen College. Of particular interest to fans of the Narnia chronicles will be Walter Hooper's talk on the making of the series, an essay of a slightly more personal nature which guides the book into its next section: memoirs of Lewis and the Inklings by family, friends, and members of their circle. This collection draws a certain warmth to the book, ultimately; those who are not interested in reading about Lewis from an academic standpoint will likely enjoy these personal talks over the more structured lectures that begin the book. While Walter Hooper guides the reader through the formation of the famous Inklings, group member John Wain recounts his experiences of Warren "Warnie" Lewis in a delightful homage to the Lewis brothers. There is an account of C.S. Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman by the friend who officiated their wedding, and an admiring cousin recounts her childhood experiences of "Jacks" as a joyful member of the family.

“At many many points in C.S. Lewis’s writings there is evident a keen sense of the wonder and mystery of the created world. Lewis was far-ranging in his imaginative power, masterly in his command of words, and he used both imagination and language to full effect when describing the realm of nature.”

— Kallistos Ware, Sacramentalism in C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams (C.S. Lewis and His Circle)

Altogether, the essays collected here make up a terrifically diverse sampling of what it's like to study Lewis. Editors Roger White, Judith Wolfe, and Brendan N. Wolfe bring to this unique collection the very sense of Oxford’s academic and intellectual aesthetic, creating a doorway through which Lewis enthusiasts can study this extraordinary thinker amid the very atmosphere that Lewis himself was likely ensconced. At turns scholarly and reflective, C.S. Lewis and His Circle is a collection that will challenge, surprise, and delight those new or long-time admirers of Lewis and his Inklings companions.

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“I believe that enjoying your work with all your heart is the only truly subversive position left to take as a creative person these days. It’s such a gangster move, because hardly anybody ever dares to speak of creative enjoyment aloud, for fear of not being taken seriously as an artist. So say it. Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

One of the things I find unique – and remarkable – about Elizabeth Gilbert is her natural storytelling ability, not just through her books and public appearances, but most intriguingly through her social media outlets (especially Facebook). In person, before a crowd, she has the preternatural gift of making each of her listeners feel distinctly welcome to the party, but for this inclusiveness, this sense of intimacy, to be transmitted through text to millions of people across the globe all at once is nothing short of magic.

“You might spend your whole life following your curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end – except one thing. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic

With her Facebook community Gilbert shares stories of what inspires her, whether moments and conversations from her past that she holds onto or new discoveries and ideas that enchant her imagination. She worries less about hashtags and buzzwords - and, my favorite, she gives not a whit whether her stories are long or short. She writes lovingly, and that seems to be her highest priority. But beyond her stories, which often garner hundreds of responses and thousands of interactions, she encourages members of the community to make themselves at home and to share their own stories, to connect with each other and engage their curiosity. It was in many ways from this platform that her new book was born.

“Trust in the miraculous truth that new and marvelous ideas are looking for human collaborators every single day.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

Big Magic is a collection of vignettes in which Gilbert muses on the joy and struggle (but especially the joy, and rather struggle-be-damned) that every creative soul is likely to meet in the commitment to one’s art. With her distinctly colorful wit and lightness of character, Gilbert writes with full-hearted heroism on themes of courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, and trust. These, she says, are the pillars of living a joyfully creative life, the sort of playful and curious life to which we’re all entitled. She offers her idea of wondrous creativity as an alternative to the rather twisted perspective that the artist must be tortured, that the work must be painful, in order for any art to be truly great. "Does it work, this method?" she asks of the Tortured Artist; "Yeah, sure. It works great. Till it kills you." (There is a distinction to be made, of course, between the very real struggle of mental illness and the trend of romanticizing a dark side to creativity.)

Instead of tragedy, Gilbert relentlessly praises "stubborn gladness", a phrase she's adopted from the poet Jack Gilbert as something of a moniker for her life - in creativity as in all things. One gets the sense that Big Magic, the extraordinary partnership between creatives and free-wheeling ideas, is the direct result of a life lived with forceful, determined, stubborn gladness. Her approach of joyful art feels, shockingly enough, radical and indulgent in the best possible way. "By saying you delight in your work," she writes, "You will draw inspiration near." Because inspiration responds in a rather human way: it's encouraged by signs of appreciation. And while the purpose of this joyfulness is intended to make the work fun (of course), she wisely advises that it makes the work no less scary, and that the act of practicing stubborn gladness is not necessarily easy. One of the best examples of this rallying against the edge of creativity comes through her exploration of what the poet David Whyte calls "the arrogance of belonging".

“The arrogance of belonging is not about egotism or self-absorption. In a strange way, it’s the opposite; it is a divine force that will actually take you out of yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life. Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgement, your crushing sense of self-protection). The arrogance of belonging pulls you out of the darkest depths of self-hatred – not by saying ‘I am the greatest!’ but merely by saying ‘I am here!’”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

Gilbert includes not only her own stories, but those of her friends and the creators she admires. (Her tenacious social passion and her restless curiosity are both largely at play here.) She writes of her friendship with novelist Ann Patchett and the otherworldly journey of one playful idea between them; she writes of the poet Ruth Stone’s extraordinary progress; she writes of Marcus Aurelius and Tom Waits and Tristram Shandy and her wildly tattooed next-door neighbor. She uses not just the ideas of others, but experiences from her own life that shape her creativity practice; she candidly writes about the novel that got away, the critical response to Eat, Pray, Love (and how she dealt with the negative reactions to the book), as well as her early years of her career spent "collecting rejection letters". In her own special way, Gilbert combines her delight for curiosity and conversation to create something less like a guided self-help book and more like a memoir infused with advice.

“I work steadily and I always thank the process. Whether I am touched by grace or not, I thank creativity for allowing me to engage with it at all.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

With a seriousness that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Gilbert writes on the hypocrisy of contemporary arts education (and pokes fun at the highbrow literary scene many times), of the ego – its necessity as well as our tendency to be a slave to it – but perhaps the most powerful stories in Big Magic are when she writes about two of the most often forgotten and necessary ingredients for a creative life: permission and trust. In each of these sections she appeals to her audience in ways that bridge age gaps and life circumstances, relentlessly encouraging the reader to grant oneself permission: permission to practice, to trust one's own creativity, to make mistakes, and ultimately to enjoy.

“So you must keep trying. You must keep calling out in those dark woods for your own Big Magic. You must search tirelessly and faithfully, hoping against hope to someday experience that divine collision of creative communion – either for the first time, or one more time.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

By becoming an admirer of the nature of creativity – and believing it appreciates her in return – Gilbert puts all of her instructions to use in Big Magic, resulting in a book that’s fearless of voice and heart-opening in authenticity; in short, a book worthy of its name.

“Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters. You don’t need to know what anything means. Remember: The gods of creativity are not obliged to explain anything to us. Own your disappointment, acknowledge it for what it is, and move on. Chop up that failure and use it for bait to try to catch another project. Someday it might all make sense to you – why you needed to go through this botched-up mess in order to land in a better place. Or maybe it will never make sense. So be it.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

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“Bless the words with which I try to say What I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth. The expected and the exception, both. For all the hours I have been given to Be in this world.”

— Mary Oliver, Good Morning (from Blue Horses)

Few poets capture the world with such ethereal grace and strict joy as Mary Oliver. In her 2014 collection, Blue Horses, she returns to some of her most poignant and witty moods to remark on nature, life, death, and just about everything else. In her beloved way, Oliver avoids her work becoming overly stylized by not really styling (or, at least, not visibly, earnestly styling) it at all.

Her poems become conversations with the reader, the result of the way Oliver sees life with dauntless curiosity and an open heart. Her rhetoric takes on the vivacity of a delighted child, with a child’s wisdom - a wisdom gained by being open to the world as a rule. In her commonplace subject matter she uncovers opportunity for laughter, while in her consideration of the natural world she delivers the trademark significance her readers have come to love with as much otherworldly lyricism as ever before.

“Oh, mother earth, Your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this.”

— Mary Oliver, Loneliness (from Blue Horses)

The collection’s first poem, “After Reading Lucretius, I Go to the Pond”, draws the reader gently into the wild world of Oliver’s imagination as the poet observes a heron at mealtime, turning the circle of life into a kaleidoscope of wonderment. Meanwhile in poems like “What I Can Do”, “First Yoga Class”, and “On Meditating, Sort Of” Oliver turns the narrative spotlight onto herself, poking fun at gracelessness, age, and technology. But within those poems lies, as is so often hidden in her work (or sometimes put on valiant display), a profundity that sparks the imagination and ignites a deep shift in perspective.

Of particular note and celebration within Blue Horses is “Rumi”, a poem dedicated to Coleman Barks, the poet responsible for interpreting many of Rumi's works, and paying homage to the great Sufi mystic. For those who read poetry as soul food, to have Oliver writing about Rumi is undoubtedly the jewel in the artistry's crown. The poet doesn't disappoint, speaking words at the heart of every Rumi enthusiast and capturing his effect on readers with an honesty and simplicity that only a Mary Oliver poem can deliver.

“When Rumi went into the tavern I followed. I heard a lot of crazy talk And a lot of wise talk.

But the roses wouldn’t grow in my hair.

When Rumi left the tavern I followed. I don’t mean just to peek at such a famous fellow. Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his long beard and his dusty feet. But I heard less of the crazy talk and a lot more of the wise talk and I was hopeful enough to keep listening

until the day I found myself transformed into an entire garden of roses.”

— Mary Oliver, Rumi (from Blue Horses)

As a dedicated Mary Oliver fan – one who memorizes poems like "Why I Wake Early" and sets her pulse to the tune of "Wild Geese" – one particular poem stood out in Blue Horses that especially felt as though Oliver was reaching out the light of her wisdom and illuminating a forgotten, unspoken piece of my soul. That was “I Don’t Want to Be Demure or Respectable”:

“I don’t want to be demure or respectable. I was that way, asleep, for years. That way, you forget too many important things. How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them, are singing. How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and the sky, it’s been there before. What traveling is that! It is a joy to imagine such distances. I could skip sleep for the next hundred years. There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes. It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room. The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen pot was missed by everyone else in the house.”

— Mary Oliver, I Don't Want to Be Demure or Respectable (from Blue Horses)

In “Blueberries” and “The Mangroves”, the poet turns her attention from the New England wilds that have long dominated her work’s atmosphere to her Florida residence where she comes to terms with the foreignness of the tropical beauty and learns to handle what she discovers there with as much compassion and curiosity as her northern world. But then, in poems like “Such Silence”, she returns us to the familiar territory of her prose: an anonymous bench in an anonymous forest where she waits on angels and does not see them “only, I think, because I didn’t stay long enough.”

The title poem in the collection is named after the cover’s artwork, which was painted by 19th century German expressionist artist Franz Marc. Oliver’s poem describes her feeling of the painting and her experience of falling in love with the work. It’s an apt and beautiful tribute to a stirring creation by an artist whose career ended far too soon (he died at only 36).

“Some days I fall asleep, or land in that Even better place – half-asleep – where the world, Spring, summer, autumn, winter – Flies through my mind in its Hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time Reveal their true attitudes: they never Heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.”

— Mary Oliver; On Meditating, Sort Of (from Blue Horses)

With her subliminal charisma and earth-shaking, wide-eyed, compassionate wisdom, Mary Oliver once again proves herself with Blue Horses; her poems are truly food for the soul and fuel for the spirit. With a turn of phrase, Oliver summons the child in all of us – indeed, she summons the child in all things – and spreads onto that child the stardust of her great love.

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On January 8, 1839, during the eighth US president's time in office, William A. Clark was born in a Pennsylvania log cabin. One hundred and seventy-two years and thirty-six presidents later, his daughter Huguette would be living in reclusion in the middle of Manhattan, the century-old heiress of an unfathomable fortune rendered from copper in the time of the Civil War. It’s an extraordinary story of rags-to-riches with several lifetimes’ worth of scandal, loss, and generosity in between – a story of a remarkable family and one of American history’s greatest fortunes, both fallen into the shadows, hidden in plain sight. The breadcrumbs of this forgotten piece of social and cultural history were stumbled upon in 2009 by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman who, when fanciful curiosity led him slightly out of his price range, came across an abandoned mansion while he was house-hunting in Connecticut. He soon discovered that the house, in a shambles but still handled by a manager, was owned by a woman who had never lived in it – a woman with the unfamiliar name of Huguette Clark. Further curiosity led Dedman to find out that Huguette had yet another mansion to her name on the opposite coast, as well as three expansive apartments in Manhattan. All empty. Dedman went on to investigate these abandoned residences and their elusive owner, the relatively unknown Huguette Clark, who at one hundred and two years old was living in perfect health in a Manhattan hospital – and had been for twenty years. He covered the story on NBCNews.com before joining one of Huguette’s distant relatives, her cousin’s son, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., to tell the Clark family saga in their book, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.

Empty Mansions is an expansive account, astonishing in its true-to-life detail, of not only Huguette’s life, but of her father W.A. Clark’s life as well, which included political aspirations (ending, unfortunately, in scandal), two marriages, nine children, and one incredible fortune. W.A. may have been born in a Pennsylvania log cabin, but he died a copper magnate with a wealth to rival Rockefeller’s. Huguette, born in Paris and raised in a fairytale mansion in Manhattan, was an artist, a divorcee, a recluse, and an extraordinarily generous woman. Through their book, Dedman and Newell uncover the story of this forgotten family through the rooms they left behind: the empty mansions, the hospital rooms, the apartments, and the cabins. If walls could talk, indeed.

With clarity and precision, Empty Mansions luminously recounts the years lost to history as well as the future of Huguette’s fortune after her death, seamlessly stitching together a patchwork of American history ranging from the Civil War to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The authors document the peculiarities of Huguette, who throughout her long life dedicated herself to her hobbies: music, collecting dolls and the artwork of the Impressionist masters, conceiving the designs of Japanese dollhouses, and attending to the comfort and care of her close friends and confidantes. Yet she gave very little attention to her vast wealth, which she gave away to friends, nurses, and loved ones with profound nonchalance.

Being, as she was, a fiercely private person at all costs, Huguette’s memory is honored in the authors' depiction; she is presented with loving kindness, and her story handled with the same care she would deem befitting of her beloved dolls. Those who surrounded her, however, were not so clearly motivated by good intentions as Huguette. Did her doctors and nurses take advantage of her generosity? Were her accountant and lawyer a fraud and a crook? Were her extended family, who contested the will of which they were left out, only after her fortune? Diligently and with utmost respect to Huguette, Dedman and Newell present every side of this amazing story before the reader. As a result, Empty Mansions is a masterwork of historical nonfiction, a meticulous documentation of the journey of a great American fortune and the story of a remarkable woman who cultivated imagination and pursued her heart’s passions throughout decades of anonymity.

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Tyler Knott Gregson wrote the first poem in his popular typewriter series without ever knowing there would be a typewriter series. After stumbling across an old Remington typewriter in a used bookshop, he took a page from the $2 book he was purchasing and, without ceremony (without even taking a seat), he typed out a poem. What followed was a love affair between a poet and an unchangeable medium. Gregson, a born romantic and self-proclaimed “chaser of the light”, fell in love with the honesty of writing poetry on a typewriter, the solidity of the aesthetic and its inability to be edited. He first shared his poems online to viral acclaim, and now a selection of them are available in his book, Chasers of the Light. The book comprises poems Gregson has typed on found scraps of papers as well as poetry created with the blackout method (book pages blacked out to leave only stray words that together form a poem), and traditionally printed poems accompanying some of his original photography. What looks to be a slight book is full to bursting with the hallmarks of Gregson’s work: the courage of love and the curiosity of life told through the creativity of the artistic experience. It would be inaccurate to say that Gregson’s poems turn the unremarkable into the remarkable; rather, he has a way of uncovering the truth that these small, inconsequential things have been remarkable all along – it’s a matter of perspective, and perspective specifically shaped by hope, compassion, and bravery. His words tell brief stories that dig into the old-fashioned romanticism of life, often exploring the nature of being in love – defining, through poetry, the otherwise undefinable emotions – but also unraveling a universe of romantic notions, poems dreamed up by observations and philosophical meanderings; an example of that aspect is a poem accompanying a photo Gregson took of a long abandoned track for racehorses. In beautiful language and with touching courage, Gregson reminds us of the romanticism defined by looking for the big things in the small, looking for beauty in the unexpected; the journey of rediscovering the remarkable.

There’s a saying sometimes referenced in the lojong practice of Tibetan Buddhism: "Gain and victory to others, loss and defeat to myself." As I understand it, the phrase instructs us to open ourselves up to our defeats, to expose ourselves to our faults with compassion, and to also be free in sharing the joys of life with others. I was reminded of this saying while reading Chasers of the Light (no coincidence, I'm sure, as Gregson is a Buddhist himself). The tone in many of the poems is at once self-focused, dwelling with honestly and acceptance on the struggles of the author, and also worshipful of the external: a loved one or a budding blossom or an appreciation for something bigger than oneself. It's an interesting contrast, and one that takes the reader beyond the simplicity of even the smallest poems into a place of quiet wonderment. In this balance of the internal and the external, weighing discontent with compassion, Gregson strikes some of the most profound notes in a collection of poems that evoke consistent inspiration and lasting resonance.

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