Dharma Talk

2023

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Dharma Talk

2023

“John Brehm weaves together timeless wisdom and a deep poetic sensibility.”

—Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

A new volume of original poetry from the bestselling creator of Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy.

In Dharma Talk, award-winning poet John Brehm explores the perennial themes of aging, compassion, emptiness, nonseparation, and more. At once poignant and humorous, Brehm’s gentle, wry poems remind us that the personal and the universal are not different—and point us to the Dharma of everyday life.

“Dharma Talk is one of those small, rare books that feel profoundly necessary.” — Carl Dennis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Practical Gods and Earthborn

“Think of this collection as a Guidebook to Emptiness—to everything and nothing (which, as the poet tells us, are interchangeable). Brehm gives us a taste of that everything in images ranging from jasmine blossoms placed beside the bed to perfume the dreamer’s sleep, to a brain bathed in sea salt and lavender. These collected lines hang in the air like the spider’s web described in Brehm’s poem Design: ‘knowing / just how / much to give / in either / direction / without breaking.’ Dharma Talk is full of wonders.” — Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera