Download or read book When Poets Pray written by Marilyn McEntyre and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two dozen select prayer poems to learn from and live with Poetry and prayer are closely related. We often look to poets to give language to our deepest hopes, fears, losses—and prayers. Poets slow us down. They teach us to stop and go in before we go on. They play at the edges of mystery, holding a tension between line and sentence, between sense and reason, between the transcendent and the deeply, comfortingly familiar. When Poets Pray contains thoughtful meditations by Marilyn McEntyre on choice poems/prayers and poems about prayer. Her beautifully written reflections are contemplative exercises, not scholarly analyses, meant more as invitation than instruc¬tion. Here McEntyre shares gifts that she herself has received from poets who pray, or who reflect on prayer, believing that they have other gifts to offer readers seeking spiritual companionship along our pilgrim way. POETS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK Hildegard of Bingen Lucille Clifton Walter Chalmers Smith Robert Frost Wendell Berry Joy Harjo John Donne Gerard Manley Hopkins Said Marilyn McEntyre George Herbert Thomas Merton Denise Levertov Scott Cairns Mary Oliver Marin Sorescu T. S. Eliot Richard Wilbur Francisco X. Alarcon Anna Kamienska Michael Chitwood Psalm 139:1-12

Download or read book After Prayer written by Malcolm Guite and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new poetry collection from bestselling poet and priest Malcolm Guite features more than seventy new and previously unpublished works. At the heart of this collection is a sequence of twenty seven sonnets written in response to George Herbert’s exquisite sonnet 'Prayer', each one describing prayer in an arresting metaphor such as ‘the church's banquet’, ‘reversed thunder’, ‘the Milky Way’, ‘the bird of paradise’ and ‘something understood’. In conversation with each of these, Malcolm’s sonnets offer profound insights into the nature of communion with God in all circumstances and conditions. Recognising that all poetry is a pursuit of prayer, After Prayer also includes forty five more widely ranging new poems, including a sonnet sequence on the seven heavens.

Download or read book The Hundredfold written by Anthony Esolen and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2019-08-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hundredfold is a tapestry of hymns, monologues, and short lyrics knit together as one book-length poem in praise of Christ in all his startling humanity. Drawing from the riches of the English poetic tradition—meter, rhyme, music—the poet considers the mysterious man from Nazareth and the world he came to set on fire with splendor. Having made a career translating the Italian masters Dante and Tasso, Anthony Esolen now puts on the dusty mantle of such English craftsmen as Donne, Milton, and Hopkins in his first book of original contemplative poetry. The Hundredfold contains dramatic monologues set in first-century Greece and Palestine; lyrical meditations on creation, longing, failure, modern emptiness, and unshakeable hope; and twenty-one brand-new hymns, set to such traditional melodies as “Picardy” and “Old One-Hundred-Twenty-Fourth”. The book includes an introduction with diamond-sharp insights into English poetic form—at a time when form is so often misunderstood, if not dismissed. It provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and poets themselves, as well as those who simply read poetry for pleasure.

Download or read book The New Testament written by Jericho Brown and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honored as a "Best Book of 2014" by Library Journal NPR.org writes: “In his second collection, The New Testament, Brown treats disease and love and lust between men, with a gentle touch, returning again and again to the stories of the Bible, which confirm or dispute his vision of real life. 'Every last word is contagious,' he writes, awake to all the implications of that phrase. There is plenty of guilt—survivor’s guilt, sinner’s guilt—and ever-present death, but also the joy of survival and sin. And not everyone has the chutzpah to rewrite The Good Book.”—NPR.org "Erotic and grief-stricken, ministerial and playful, Brown offers his reader a journey unlike any other in contemporary poetry."—Rain Taxi "To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius."—Claudia Rankine In the world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing—and the truth is coming on fast. Fairy Tale Say the shame I see inching like steam Along the streets will never seep Beneath the doors of this bedroom, And if it does, if we dare to breathe, Tell me that though the world ends us, Lover, it cannot end our love Of narrative. Don’t you have a story For me?—like the one you tell With fingers over my lips to keep me From sighing when—before the queen Is kidnapped—the prince bows To the enemy, handing over the horn Of his favorite unicorn like those men Brought, bought, and whipped until They accepted their masters’ names. Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. He currently teaches at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Download or read book Hammer Is the Prayer written by Christian Wiman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The selected poems of American poet Christian Wiman"--

Download or read book Poetry Unbound 50 Poems to Open Your World written by Pádraig Ó. Tuama and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Mesmerizing, magical, deeply moving.” —Elif Shafak Expanding on the popular podcast of the same name from On Being Studios, Poetry Unbound offers immersive reflections on fifty powerful poems. In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama’s appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and warm personal anecdotes, Ó Tuama considers each poem’s artistry and explores how its meaning can reach into our own lives. Focusing mainly on poets writing today, Ó Tuama engages with a diverse array of voices that includes Ada Limón, Ilya Kaminsky, Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong, Layli Long Soldier, and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Natasha Trethewey meditates on miscegenation and Mississippi; Raymond Antrobus makes poetry out of the questions shot at him by an immigration officer; Martín Espada mourns his father; Marie Howe remembers and blesses her mother’s body; Aimee Nezhukumatathil offers comfort to her child-self. Through these wide-ranging poems, Ó Tuama guides us on an inspiring journey to reckon with self-acceptance, history, independence, parenthood, identity, joy, and resilience. For anyone who has wanted to try their hand at a conversation with poetry but doesn’t know where to start, Poetry Unbound presents a window through which to celebrate the art of being alive.

Download or read book Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir written by Hamsa Stainton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, Kashmir was one of the most dynamic and influential centers of Sanskrit learning and literary production in South Asia. In Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir, Hamsa Stainton investigates the close connection between poetry and prayer in South Asia by studying the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir. The book provides a broad introduction to the history and general features of the stotra genre, and it charts the course of these literary hymns in Kashmir from the eighth century to the present. In particular, it offers the first major study in any European language of the Stutikusum=añjali, an important work of religious literature dedicated to the god 'Siva and one of the only extant witnesses to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. The book also contributes to the study of 'Saivism by examining the ways in which 'Saiva poets have integrated the traditions of Sanskrit literature and poetics, theology (especially non-dualism), and 'Saiva worship and devotion. It substantiates the diverse configurations of 'Saiva bhakti expressed and explored in these literary hymns and the challenges they present for standard interpretations of Hindu bhakti. More broadly, this study of stotras from Kashmir offers new perspectives on the history and vitality of prayer in South Asia and its complex relationships to poetry and poetics.

Download or read book Sinners Welcome written by Mary Karr and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story. Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

Download or read book The Devil s Tour written by Mary Karr and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her celebrated essay "Against Decoration," published in Parnassus, Mary Karr took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days and their attendant justifications: deconstruction and a "new formalism" that elevates form as an end in itself. Her own poems, she says, are "humanist poems," written for everyday readers rather than an exclusive audience--poems that do not require an academic explication in order to be understood. Of The Devil's Tour, her newest collection, she writes: "This is a book of poems about standing in the dark, about trying to memorize the bad news. The tour is a tour of the skull. l am thinking of Satan in Paradise Lost: 'The mind is its own place and it can make a hell of heav'n or a heav'n of hell ... I myself am hell."

Download or read book Borders and Belonging written by Pádraig Ó Tuama and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading poet and a theologian reflect on the Old Testament story of Ruth, a tale that resonates deeply in today's world with its themes of migration, the stranger, mixed cultures and religions, law and leadership, women in public life, kindness, generosity and fear. Ruth's story speaks directly to many of the issues and deep differences that Brexit has exposed and to the polarisation taking place in many societies. Pádraig Ó Tuama and Glenn Jordan bring the redemptive power of Ruth to bear on today's seemingly intractable social and political divisions, reflecting on its challenges and how it can help us be effective in the public square, amplify voices which are silenced, and be communities of faith in our present day. Over the last year, the material that inspired this book has been used with over 6000 people as a public theology initiative from Corrymeela, Ireland's longest-established peace and reconciliation centre. It has been met with an overwhelming response because of its immediacy and relevance, enabling people with opposing views to come together and be heard.

Download or read book Viper Rum Poetry written by Mary Karr and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her first book since "The Liar's Club", Karr delves into the autobiographical subject matter of her two early collections. Various beloveds are birthed and buried in these lyrics, some of which--as the title suggests--deal with drink. Exact and surprising, her poems "take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own" ("Poetry").

Download or read book Ordinary Blessings written by Meta Herrick Carlson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ordinary moments of life can be sacred, if we simply take a moment to notice. This collection of prayers, poems, and meditations offers a brief respite from the hectic, harried pace of our days. Open it when the spirit moves you or when the spirit feels distant--the words will be here to inspire, calm, and encourage you either way. From gifted poet and empathetic pastor Meta Herrick Carlson, Ordinary Blessings collects blessings for loving yourself, enduring hard things, authenticity, living with others, and the rhythms of each day. Pause, take a deep breath, and open these pages to find that you've been standing on holy ground all along.

Download or read book Amen written by Karyn D. Kedar and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This collection includes prayers for personal use, prayers for use at communal gatherings, prayers and readings for moments of grief and moments of joy, a collection of daily Psalms, and focus phrases and questions for meditation"--

Download or read book From Tiger to Prayer written by Deborah Keenan and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of suggested ideas and questions for poetry writing.

Download or read book Tropic of Squalor written by Mary Karr and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit. Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous—that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power—illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you’re an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.

Download or read book The Cure for Sorrow written by Jan Richardson and published by . This book was released on 2020-08 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jan Richardson unexpectedly lost her husband and creative partner, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, she did what she had long known how to do: she wrote blessings. These were no sugar-coated blessings. They minimized none of the pain and bewilderment that came in the wake of a wrenching death. With these blessings, Jan entered, instead, into the depths of the shock, anger, and sorrow. From those depths, she has brought forth words that, with heartbreaking honesty, offer surprising comfort and stunning grace. Those who know loss will find kinship among these pages. In these blessings that move through the anguish of rending into the unexpected shelters of solace and hope, there shimmers a light that helps us see we do not walk alone. From her own path of grief, Jan offers a luminous, unforgettable gift that invites us to know the tenacity of hope and to recognize the presence of love that, as she writes, is "sorrow's most lasting cure."

Download or read book My Garden of Prayer written by Helen Steiner Rice and published by Barbour Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Steiner Rice's unique artistry of faith-filled poetry forms this beautiful collection of encouraging verse about prayer. My Garden of Prayer includes beloved poetry following themes like Thankfulness, Heavenly Blessings, God's Love, and the Power of Prayer. This volume of verse, with encouraging scripture, is perfect for your own personal reflection or makes a heartfelt gift.