Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words

By: Kim Rosen

Narrated by: Kim Rosen

Poetry, our most ancient form of prayer, is a necessary medicine for our times: a companion through difficulty; a guide when we are lost; a salve when we are wounded; and a conduit to an inner source of joy, freedom, and insight. Through poetry, the unspeakable can be spoken, the unendurable endured, and the miraculous shared. Whether you are a lover of poetry or have yet to discover its power, Rosen offers a new way to experience a poem. She encourages you to receive the poem as a teacher, friend and tranformative substance, which can align every level of your being.

In an uncertain world, Saved by a Poem is an emphatic call to cultivate the ever-renewable resources of the heart. Weaving teaching, story, verse, and memoir, Rosen guides you to find a poem that speaks to you so you can take it into your life and become a voice for its wisdom in the world. The cello music of Jami Sieber interweaves the chapters and poems. Additional material features the voices of well-known authors reading a favorite poem and discussing its personal significance: Joan Borysenko, Andrew Harvey, Jane Hirshfield, Marie Howe, Grace Yi-Nan Howe, Robert Holden, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Lesser, Thomas Moore, Christiane Northrup, Cheryl Richardson, Kim Rosen, and Geneen Roth.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2009 Hay House Publishing (P)2024 Kim Rosen

Critic reviews

"I read and loved Saved by a poem 14 years ago in print form. Now, with Kim's gorgeous voicing of her prose mingled with the great poetry that inspired her, and the exquisitely sensitive accompaniment of Jami Sieber's electric cello, the work resonates with even greater depth. I don't know how Kim packs so much emotion and tenderness into every syllable...but she does, revealing new layers of meaning to poems I thought I knew well. It was an inspiring experience to read her book with my eyes over a decade ago. It is a transformative experience to listen to it now." - Alison Luterman, author of In the Time of Great Fires and Desire Zoo

Poetry as portal

The only thing better than holding this beautiful book in my hands and reading it was listening to it being read by the author. This book not only invites the reader into an intimate relationship with poetry, it invites one into a more intimate relationship with one’s self through the portal poetry can open.

A most precious book

To hear Saved by a Poem read is transformative. The gifts one receives are too many to list. Besides hearing specific poems, one also gets an invitation to poetry in the unique way of Kim Rosen—relax your mind with poetry, dare not understand, just listen as if to music. It’s true we just enjoy it. Why not do the same with poetry! She teaches about the joys of poetry, showing how wonderful it can be to share with others but also reading it aloud alone. The stories of how poetry has healed herself and others are also woven into the book. It is a book to cherish and listen to. I must say the audio version is an even better experience than the written book. Thank you for this, Kim Rosen.

A Transformational Listen

In my 15 years of Audible membership (with four hundred books in my library) Saved by a Poem is my favorite audiobook because it works on so many distinct levels. While no doubt there have been points in your life when you learned a poem, Rosen persuasively introduces the idea of going beyond simple memorization and developing a relationship with poems as part of one’s soul work. As we humans deal with the difficulties of life, Rosen sees poetry as “medicine” that can become a central part of our healing process. What comes through loud and clear is the usefulness of knowing a poem by heart – writing the poem on your bones as it were – and then carrying it with you wherever you go. Three poems that are especially meaningful to me in this regard at Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness,” Marie Howe’s “Annunciation,” and Stanley Kunitz’s magnificent “King of the River.” The audiobook contains lessons and practices for each of these endeavors along with heartwarming and illuminating stories based on the author’s experiences as a teacher and interviews with poets such as Maya Angelou. The author’s narration is a tour de force voice performance buoyed at key junctures by Jami Sieber’s cello. This is a book to spend time with, cherish, and listen to over and over.

I have never been more in love with poetry

I didn’t know how much I needed to hear Saved by a Poem. For over 15 years, I’ve treasured my much-dog-eared paperback copy, but like a poem, this was a book that desperately wanted to be spoken, to be heard, to be brought into the body with music and cadence. The generosity, passion and honest joy in Kim’s voice makes the words bloom in me, and I discover again, as if for the first time, how powerfully, how generously language can open us, can bring us into communion with the other beings in this world and with the world itself. Listening to this book, I feel transformed, galvanized, alive with possibility and hope for humanity. It’s a love song of a book spoken by one of the greatest readers of poetry of our time.