100 books like Microjoys

Joy might not be the first thing you think of when considering grief, but then maybe you haven’t read Ross Gay.

Gay understands that joy exists because of grief, not as a counterbalance, but in a deeply reciprocal relationship. As his father is dying, he presses their faces together, and in his father’s freckles, he sees seeds, a garden. It is just one instance in this book where Gay recognizes that what grows from loss is love.

His book clarifies what I know to be true: that when we fall into the hole of loss, we find ourselves in a deep well of love.

I love this book of poetry because it is so easy to pick up and read one poem like a meditation.

Each one invites the reader to explore Joy in their surroundings and inner world as something that is so accessible to them. I use it almost as a mirror to reflect back to myself my most powerful and Joyful capacity when I have forgotten it. It’s a perfect book for anyone’s bedside or altar. 

I bought this book when I was looking for something else: its title hit me between the eyes. The word “bittersweet” encapsulates everything I often feel; I was nodding along in self-recognition.

If I’m honest, I’ve probably internalised a certain amount of shame around my strong emotions. Definitely, I’ve longed to feel less viscerally about the highs and lows of life. Or, at least, to feel them sequentially – instead of jumbled together: wonderful things tinged with the sadness of impermanence; hard things somehow glowing around the edges with the feeling of being really alive.

What to do with all the emotions? That’s been my recurring question. This book answers – gently, but insistently – make art.

I had to put this book in because sometimes it gives me great Joy to get lost in a good story, especially one where women come out victorious.

This is set in Seattle, where I currently live, which also was fun and literally I turned page to page and lost track of time. It’s been a long time since I’ve read fiction and reading this was pure Joy. At the end, I wanted it to keep going and am secretly hoping for a sequel!

This beautiful short novel about various matters, including chickens, house cleaning, idiosyncratic neighbors and parents, is funny—really, how can you not laugh at a hen named Miss Hennepin Country.  (Her owners live in Minnesota.)

Also, the novel goes to the heart of the grief of infertility. At the same time, Jackie Polzin is very, very funny in a remarkably quiet way. Her writing is spare, eloquent, and precise. She is, as we say in the biz, The Real Deal. I can open this book at any page and marvel and be filled with happiness.  

Faith of Cranes leans more on the inspiration than being an outright adventure, but an adventure it is. It’s a quiet, lilting, beautifully written memoir about home and community, and a former wildlife biologist’s attempt to recover his own sense of hope amidst the ravages of climate change. His story is adeptly tied to the history and lifecycle of the sandhill cranes he chronicles throughout the book, as well as his community, its natural beauty and the eccentric neighbors he shares it with. Ultimately, with the birth of his daughter, his hope is restored, at least to a point.  

A pet can be a powerful companion, which is why I've always adored books that convey the relationship between a person and their animal and how a furry friend can help us out of our darkest times. Written with a song-like rhyme and with animals portraying friendship, help, and hope, it tells the story of a girl and her companion fox, illustrated colorfully. I particularly like the background scenes. The book undoubtedly runs from a troubled stage to a place of hope.

A friend once asked to whom I’d most want to be apprenticed. I thought about it for a while and answered, “Joan Chittister.” She invariably speaks deeply from a spirituality not limited to her Catholic orthodoxy, but inclusive of many other religious traditions. I never stop learning from her wisdom which often arises from her own experience.

In Chittister’s chapter about endurance, I am reminded of my own struggles as a writer and as a minister and how these struggles have deepened my spiritual understanding. Her words always give me hope and help me to persevere.

That’s what a minute said to an hour
Without me you are nothing

I know what you’re saying. First a kid’s book, now poems? Yes. Even though she has lived in St. Louis, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and now San Antonio, you would swear that she probably lived right down the street from wherever you are. In fact, she lives right down the road from me.

The wind never says
Call me back,
I’ll be waiting for your call.
All we know about wind’s address is
somewhere else.

Even though we share a birthday with Jack Kerouac and James Taylor, we have never met, but when I read her poems, I feel like I’m having a cup of coffee with a close friend, the friend you haven’t seen in years, but you know that if they walked in the door right now, you’d just pick up where you left off and talk… show more.

This is the poetry book for people like me, who aren’t “good” at poetry, but who desperately need to believe humanity is still mostly intact and the world around us still brims with beauty.

I keep this one on my bedside table and reach for it when I need a quick reminder that we still have a say in the direction our society leans. More blooms. More abundance. More ordinary goodness. More us.