Poetry
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Contemporary Catholic Poetry
$35.00Add to cartFeaturing 23 contemporary Catholic poets, from Julia Alvarez and Carolyn Forche to Timothy Murphy and Franz Wright, this anthology is an essential collection that captures the spectrum of the Catholic experience.
Editors Ryan Wilson and April Lindner have collected the work of Catholic poets born in 1950 and afterward. Featuring diverse styles, aesthetics, and forms, this selection demonstrates “the myriad ways the Church has left its mark on the imaginations of these notable contemporary poets.” A treasury of vibrant beauty–this collection explores the personal, practical, and political, of faith, nature, life, and lament–a welcome gift to all lovers of poetry and language.
“Poems represent the world and the people who inhabit it: they introduce us to plants, animals, human characters, and highly specific places. They show us striking images that may be familiar to us or entirely eldritch, tell us about experiences that might be akin to our own or quite different from our own. They delight us, seduce us, inspire us, instruct us, mock us, condemn us, console us, and mourn us. They challenge us, protest against us, and, sometimes, they baffle us. They celebrate the glories of the created world and its people, and they commemorate momentous occasions; they also curse the cruelty and the horror of the world and its people, and they lament catastrophes. They imagine other people’s lives and other worlds. They invoke deities and absences. They also speak intimately of heartfelt truths, describe local haunts, and address ordinary people directly. They meditate on living, on dying, and on the passage of time. They tell us stories, they tell us lies, and they tell us stories that reveal the truth through lying, to paraphrase the great painter Pablo Picasso. They enchant us with beauty and appall us with terror. Above all, poems remember. Each poem is, on a fundamental level, an act of remembrance, a kind of handprint pressed against the wall of Time.”–from the Preface of Contemporary Catholic Poetry
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Contemporary Catholic Poetry
$25.00Add to cartFeaturing 23 contemporary Catholic poets, from Julia Alvarez and Carolyn Forche to Timothy Murphy and Franz Wright, this anthology is an essential collection that captures the spectrum of the Catholic experience.
Editors Ryan Wilson and April Lindner have collected the work of Catholic poets born in 1950 and afterward. Featuring diverse styles, aesthetics, and forms, this selection demonstrates “the myriad ways the Church has left its mark on the imaginations of these notable contemporary poets.” A treasury of vibrant beauty–this collection explores the personal, practical, and political, of faith, nature, life, and lament–a welcome gift to all lovers of poetry and language.
“Poems represent the world and the people who inhabit it: they introduce us to plants, animals, human characters, and highly specific places. They show us striking images that may be familiar to us or entirely eldritch, tell us about experiences that might be akin to our own or quite different from our own. They delight us, seduce us, inspire us, instruct us, mock us, condemn us, console us, and mourn us. They challenge us, protest against us, and, sometimes, they baffle us. They celebrate the glories of the created world and its people, and they commemorate momentous occasions; they also curse the cruelty and the horror of the world and its people, and they lament catastrophes. They imagine other people’s lives and other worlds. They invoke deities and absences. They also speak intimately of heartfelt truths, describe local haunts, and address ordinary people directly. They meditate on living, on dying, and on the passage of time. They tell us stories, they tell us lies, and they tell us stories that reveal the truth through lying, to paraphrase the great painter Pablo Picasso. They enchant us with beauty and appall us with terror. Above all, poems remember. Each poem is, on a fundamental level, an act of remembrance, a kind of handprint pressed against the wall of Time.”–from the Preface of Contemporary Catholic Poetry
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My Sour Sweet Days
$14.99Add to cartGeorge Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he’s having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. These are some of the themes Mark Oakley explores in this outstanding book. He offers a poem for every day in Lent, with a two-page commentary on each of the forty included.
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Mystical Prayer : The Poetic Example Of Emily Dickinson
$15.95Add to cartIn this book, Charles Murphy explores the still unfolding rediscovery of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), our foremost American poet, as a mystic of profound depth and ambition. She declined publication of almost all of her hundreds of poems during her lifetime, describing them as a record of her wrestling with God, who, in the Puritan religious tradition she received, she found cold and remote. Murphy places Dickinson’s writings within the Christian mystical tradition exemplified by St. Teresa of Avila and identifies her poems as expressions of what he terms theologically as “believing unbelief.” Dickinson’s experiences of love and her confrontation with human mortality drove her poetic insights and led to her discovery of God in the beauty and mystery of the natural world.
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Singing Bowl : Collected Poems By Malcolm Guite
$27.49Add to cartMalcolm Guites eagerly awaited second poetry collection offers poems that seek beauty and transfiguration in contemporary life; sonnets inspired by Francis and other outstanding saints; poems centred on love, parting and mortality; and poems searching for the life of the spirit in the midst of the modern era.
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Shimmer Of Something
$19.95Add to cartProse poems, chants, litanies, simple songs, cadenced prayers, brief bursts of rhythmic observation, elegies to little moments that are not little at all in the least whatsoever–welcome to the melodic world of Brian Doyle’s “proems,” swirling with voices unreeling tales, souls telling stories, moments photographed with ink. Accessible, easy to read, blunt, brief, and sometimes unforgettable, “these are not poems,” says the author, “but life set to the music of poetry.” In A Shimmer of Something, Brian Doyle’s characteristic humor and sincerity combine to make this collection a delight to read. From his conviction that miracles breed ripples that do not cease, to his lack of faith about the life of an elderberry bush, to the amusing story of a friend’s experience of driving the Dalai Lama to Seattle, to the humorous experience of his second Confession, to an intimate story of love and loss, Doyle’s lean stories of spiritual substance inspire, entertain, and captivate.
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Singing Bowl : Collected Poems By Malcolm Guite
$15.99Add to cartMalcolm Guites eagerly awaited second poetry collection offers poems that seek beauty and transfiguration in contemporary life; sonnets inspired by Francis and other outstanding saints; poems centred on love, parting and mortality; and poems searching for the life of the spirit in the midst of the modern era.
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Yahwehs Other Shoe
$14.95Add to cart“Only eternal life is worthy of the name,” writes Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., in an elegy for a brother monk, and in his poetry one feels the working out of this life that begins with Adam and proceeds beyond our own span of time on earth. These poems breathe human air, but are always conscious of the larger picture of life in Christ.
“I wrestle with God ‘flesh to flesh, sweat to mystery,’ and I limp away.” This is how Father McDonnell describes his poetic project, and in these poems the reader attends a wrestling match of the highest order. He takes on the great themes of poetry: desire, mortality, love and age, brotherhood and God. Beginning with the figures of the Old and New Testament, he is aware of the human flailings, failings, and laughter in the stories as of what they say about God with us. Engaging with the events of our day, the great physical world around us, the intricate world of human relationships, and the spiritual journey of a monk, the poems continuously reveal what it means to be human.
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Saint Mary Of Eqypt
$24.95Add to cartThe saintly austerities of Mary of Egypt so impressed early monks that they recorded her life to edify their brethren. Many versions circulated and the tale traveled. Here we see Mary through the eyes of three medieval poets: Flodoard, a canon of Reims, Hildebert of Lavardin, a bishop, and an anonymous 13th century Spaniard.
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Swift Lord You Are Not
$21.95Add to cartSome poets begin very early to write great poetry. Arthur Rimbaud wrote one of his best poems at 15, Percy Shelley published his first book of poetry at 18. But Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., did not start until he was 75, after decades of writing as a professional theologian. Now 82 he gives us Swift, Lord, You Are Not, poems of the struggle to find God-waiting for the silence of God to break. He does not write pious verse, or inspirational poetry, but of wrestling with the illusive God. His themes are mostly biblical and monastic. He closes with an essay Poet: Can You Start at Seventy-Five? in which he describes the literary decisions he makes within the monastic context-decisions he needs to make with some dispatch. At 75 he does not have decades to mature. He writes with a new language.
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Show Yourself To My Soul
$18.95Add to cartOut of Bengal and the Hindu spiritual tradition comes a Nobel prize-winning mystical poet whose time for broad, popular acceptance has come. William Butler Yeats fell in love with these poems almost a 100 years ago, the Nobel Committee honored them with their literature prize in 1913 and just recently The Utne Reader cited Tagore as one of today’s most overlooked spiritual writers. This new edition is important because its lyrical translation has been made from Tagore’s original Bengali and because it makes the entire collection of 157 Gitanjali, or “song offerings” available to a wider audience for the first time. Rabindranath Tagore wrote with the insight and emotion that so characterizes Kahlil Gibran, with the mystical passion that has made Jalaluddin Rumi so popular and with a simplicity and depth that remains fresh and attractive to today’s seekers.
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Collected Poems Of Therese Of Lisieux
$19.95Add to cartThough the influence of Therese of Lisieux has spread far and wide since her canonization, her gifts as a poet have remained largely unknown to English speaking readers. Alan Bancroft’s admirable translation captures the intelligence and fervor of her fifty poems that celebrate her joyous surrender to God.
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Growing Into God
$10.95Add to cartGrowing into God is a personal and poignant new collection of poetry. Tapping into the deep spiritual life inside all of us, and drawing upon her growing understanding of God in our insecure and fast-moving world, Gateley travels the spiritual path from disillusionment to faith, despair to joy. Gateley s poetry is passionate, authentic, and immediate. Speaking to the spiritual malaise of our times, she calls and challenges us to new possibilities by recognizing and responding to our deepest hungers. This beautiful new collection of poetry will renew and affirm you on your spiritual quest.”
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7 Last Words Of Christ
$8.99Add to cartSeven times Jesus spoke from the cross, and each of those seven last words still speaks to us today. Judith Mattison reminds us that the death of Christ is the clearest expression of God’s redeeming love for us. The cross, once a sign of defeat and shame, has become a sign of victory over sin and death. The author’s meditations on each of Jesus’ seven last words are accompanied by hymns and poetry that enlarge the possible meanings of each word, and by questions for reflection or discussion. Filled with messages of grace and love, this book is ideal for devotional reading and group study, or for use as a preaching resource.
