How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

by Barbara Kingsolver

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

There are those people that can be referred to as "salt of the earth". Barbara Kingsolver's second book of poetry moves from elegant how-tos in life to the recollection of a trip to Italy to remembrances of deceased family members. After reading this book of beautiful and deeply moving poetry, we believe Barbara Kingsolver earns this title, and we think you’ll agree.

"A gorgeous collection...These poems unplug from TV and social media and the outrage of the moment and turn our attention to the immediate and the everlasting, human intimacy and the power and mystery of nature." (Tampa Bay Times)

"Kingsolver brings her gifts of observation and reflection to HOW TO FLY...For a reader wanting to escape, to fly while grounded, this book is a map that offers surprise and delight." (BookPage)

In this intimate collection, the beloved author of The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous. 

In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with “how to” poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us. Some poems reflect on the redemptive powers of art and poetry itself; others consider where everything begins.

Closing the book are poems that celebrate natural wonders—birdsong and ghost-flowers, ruthless ants, clever shellfish, coral reefs, deadly deserts, and thousand-year-old beech trees—all speaking to the daring project of belonging to an untamed world beyond ourselves.

Altogether, these are poems about transcendence: finding breath and lightness in life and the everyday acts of living. It’s all terribly easy and, as the title suggests, not entirely possible. Or at least, it is never quite finished. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062993083
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/22/2020
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	157,205
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia. 

Date of Birth:

April 8, 1955

Place of Birth:

Annapolis, Maryland

Education:

B.A., DePauw University, 1977; M.S., University of Arizona, 1981

Website:

http://www.kingsolver.com

Table of Contents

1 How to Fly

How to Drink Water When There Is Wine 3

How to Have a Child 4

How to Cure Sweet Potatoes 5

How to Shear a Sheep 6

How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) 7

How to Give Thanks for a Broken Leg 8

How to Survive This 9

How to Do Absolutely Nothing 10

How to Lose That Stubborn Weight 11

How to Get a Divorce 12

How to Be Married 14

How to Knit a Sweater (a Realist's Prayer) 15

How to Love Your Neighbor 16

How to Be Hopeful 17

2 Pellegrinaggio

I Pellegrinaggio 21

II The Roman Circus 22

III On the Piazza 23

IV Into the Abruzzo 24

V In Torricella, Finding Her Mother's House 25

VI Circumnavigating Torricella Peligna 26

VII Pompeii 27

VIII At the Top of Mount Vesuvius 28

IX Swimming in the Bay of Naples 29

X On the Train to Sicily 30

XI Monreale 31

XII Lemon-Orchard Blue 32

XIII The Road to Erice Is Paved with Intentions 33

XIV Palermo 35

3 This Is How They Come Back to Us

Burying Ground 41

This Is How They Come Back to Us 42

Passing Death 43

The Visitation 44

Long Division 45

My Great-Grandmother's Plate 46

Thank-You Note for a Quilt 48

My Mother's Last Forty Minutes 49

4 Walking Each Other Home

By the Roots 55

My First Derby Party 56

Snow Day 58

Six Women Swimming Naked in the Ocean 59

Courtship Dance on Playa Luria 60

Will 62

Creation Stories 64

Meadowview Elementary Spelling Bee 65

Blow Me- 66

After 67

Walking Each Other Home 68

5 Dancing with the Devil

Thief 71

Dancing with the Devil: Advice for the Female Poet 72

Cage of Heaven 73

Insomniac Villanelle 75

My Afternoon with The Postman 76

6 Where It Begins

Where It Begins 81

7 The Nature of Objects

Ghost Pipes 89

The Nature of Objects 90

Come August, a Seven-Day Rain 92

Ephemera 93

Love Poem, with Birds 94

Swimming in the Wamba 95

Cradle 96

Down Under 98

The Hands of Trees 100

Mussel, Minnow 101

Matabele 102

Great Barrier 104

Forests of Antarctica 105

Notes 109

Editorial Reviews

Telling a moment is Kingsolver’s apt description of what poetry does, and it’s what she does, stunningly, in How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)… How to Fly is language and observation at their most succulent, moments seized at their peak of ripeness.” — Jonathan Miles, Garden & Gun

"A gorgeous collection...These poems unplug from TV and social media and the outrage of the moment and turn our attention to the immediate and the everlasting, human intimacy and the power and mystery of nature." — Tampa Bay Times

"Kingsolver  brings her gifts of observation and reflection to HOW TO FLY...For a reader wanting to escape, to fly while grounded, this book is a map that offers surprise and delight." — BookPage

From the Publisher

"Kingsolver  brings her gifts of observation and reflection to HOW TO FLY...For a reader wanting to escape, to fly while grounded, this book is a map that offers surprise and delight."

BookPage

"A gorgeous collection...These poems unplug from TV and social media and the outrage of the moment and turn our attention to the immediate and the everlasting, human intimacy and the power and mystery of nature."

Tampa Bay Times

Telling a moment is Kingsolver’s apt description of what poetry does, and it’s what she does, stunningly, in How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)… How to Fly is language and observation at their most succulent, moments seized at their peak of ripeness.

Jonathan Miles

Telling a moment is Kingsolver’s apt description of what poetry does, and it’s what she does, stunningly, in How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)… How to Fly is language and observation at their most succulent, moments seized at their peak of ripeness.”                                                                                       —Jonathan Miles, Garden & Gun

Garden & Gun

Nuanced and convincing…Engrossing.

Jane Ciabattari

08/28/2020

Award-winning novelist Kingsolver's second book of poetry (after 1992's Another America) contains seven sections covering everything from how to marry, to what Vincent Van Gogh may have said to his mail carrier (based on his painting of Joseph Roulin in the Barnes Museum), to a family reunion in Italy, to the ways trees communicate with one another, as in the poem, "Forests of Antarctica," in which Kingsolver muses on trees that existed thousands of years ago before the trials of Socrates and were "ringed with moss" by the time Jesus walked on water. Most of the poems are written in blocks of free verse, with some of them set up like prose poems. The exception is "Insomniac Villanelle," which discusses who to read and what to think about when you cannot sleep and which exhibits the musicality—repetition, rhyme, and meter—one associates with the form. VERDICT Ranging from the title's numerous lessons to a reading list for insomniacs, the poems in this genial new volume generally exude a pleasing sense of mystery, as exemplified by those in the final section, "The Nature of Objects." Appropriate for most collections.—C. Diane Scharper, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD

Library Journal

Barbara Kingsolver delivers her poetry of the everyday with sweet-voiced accessibility and a hint of Appalachia tang. The subjects range from losing weight (or not), peonies, sheep shearing, and knitting—“By involving fiber in my invocation of divinity/I feel assured of a fairly positive outcome”—to marriage, her mother’s death, and visiting a “burying ground”—”This cemetery is full of too much living.” It’s a mix of personal subjects that people often keep private, made universal by Kingsolver’s going public. How to get a divorce—“Don’t fight for these: The car that’s not paid for/Every gift you pretended to like.” Kingsolver reads unhurriedly, savoring the mix and match of words, giving listeners time to enjoy them with her. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2020 - AudioFile

Barbara Kingsolver delivers her poetry of the everyday with sweet-voiced accessibility and a hint of Appalachia tang. The subjects range from losing weight (or not), peonies, sheep shearing, and knitting—“By involving fiber in my invocation of divinity/I feel assured of a fairly positive outcome”—to marriage, her mother’s death, and visiting a “burying ground”—”This cemetery is full of too much living.” It’s a mix of personal subjects that people often keep private, made universal by Kingsolver’s going public. How to get a divorce—“Don’t fight for these: The car that’s not paid for/Every gift you pretended to like.” Kingsolver reads unhurriedly, savoring the mix and match of words, giving listeners time to enjoy them with her. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2020 - AudioFile