# The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives - Hardcover

by **Jennifer Michael Hecht** (Author)

**_The Wonder Paradox_ offers a lively, practical, and transcendent road map to meaning and connection through poetry.**

Where do we find magic? Peace? Connection?

We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, official archives to record legacies, the wisdom of sages read aloud, weekly, to map out the right way to live--in kindness, justice, morality. These rhythms and structures of society were all once set by religion. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show.

So how then to celebrate milestones? Find rules to guide us? Figure out which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can't be said? Where, really, are truth and beauty? The answer, says _The Wonder Paradox_, is in poetry.

In twenty chapters built from years of questions and conversations with those looking for an authentic and meaningful life, Jennifer Michael Hecht offers ways to mine and adapt the useful aspects of tradition and to replace what no longer feels true. Through cultures and poetic wisdom from around the world--Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Issa, Tagore, Frost, Szymborska, Angelou, and others--she blends literary criticism with spiritual guidance rooted in the everyday. Linking our needs to particular poems, she helps us better understand those needs, our very being, and poetry itself.

Our capacity for wonder is one of the greatest joys of being human; _The Wonder Paradox_ celebrates that instinct and that yearning.

### Author Biography

**Jennifer Michael Hecht**, a historian and poet, is the award-winning and bestselling author of the histories _Doubt_, _Stay_, _The Happiness Myth_, and _The End of the Soul_. Her poetry books include _Who Said_, _The Next Ancient World_, and _Funny_. She earned her PhD in history from Columbia University and teaches in New York City.

**Number of Pages:** 368

**Dimensions:** 1.4 x 9.1 x 6.1 IN

**Publication Date:** March 07, 2023

## Details

- **Price:** 30.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 30.00 USD | In stock |

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- The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives - Hardcover

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