How to Live on Bread and Music

Winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets and the 2009 Perugia Press Prize, this collection is life-affirming but without illusions. How to Live on Bread and Music, showcases poet Jennifer K. Sweeney's mature consciousness and circumspect intelligence. The book takes us on a physical and spiritual trip, symbolized in recurring images of the train. Exploring broad themes such as identity formation, nostalgia, and impermanence, the poet passes through risk to find refuge in the sensory world. Afaa M. Weaver says, These are poems that tell us we move forward in moments when motion seems all too risky and stillness all too intolerable.