My World and Yours: Poems Photographs

My World and Yours gathers together photographs and poems by Dr. Arnie Richards, at age 90; it is a gift to its readers, offering not only a way to be, to think, but a way to know the world in its intimacy, including family history, intellectual formation, and a tribute to love. For My World and Yours takes place within the context of a long life, full of joy, grief, music, loss, and the recognition, also, of the brutalities we live alongside. For Richards, poetry "celebrates the ordinary people, places and things, events and happenings," in language that is his own, uniquely, "rooted in the past and present, conscious and unconscious." His poems are about "how we live and when we die, who we are and who we hope to be," within this specific cultivation of care and attention to the world around us. For My World and Yours, in its photographs and poems, shows us how, as Richards writes, when "inspiration takes over our mind, we can do anything." This is at once a clear invitation and a juxtaposition of the observations from many years, resulting for the reader in a vision for living with a sustaining grace, through the years of one's own life.-Gigi Marks, Editor of this volume, poet, and author of the books Close By, Shelter, Territory, and What We Need.