In ancient Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to the meaningless activity of forever rolling a boulder to the top of a hill, then starting all over again after it had promptly rolled back downhill. Taking its cue from the famous essay on Sisyphus by the French existentialist writer Albert Camus, this book's paradoxical title and title-poem suggest the imperative of refusing to despair, of choosing one's own meaning and taking responsibility for it.
Although Imagining Sisyphus Happy includes poems of complaint, mourning, and contemptuous or exasperated satire, the book's...

Ian Sowton believes that poetry is good for you, that a poem a day keeps indifference away. As a famous line in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman puts it, "attention must be paid" and poetry is one of the most finely honed human instruments for paying attention. Affordable Wonders pays attention to places both exotic and ordinary; to characters like Mercy Jones you might just happen to meet; to politics, paintings, and the city of Toronto; to birds-from juncos to pelicans; to verses from the Christian scriptures; to the memory of friends who have died; to the cultivation of imagination, and...