In this volume, Shepherd selects from these, and from other unpublished works, to shape a series of poems that seek to portray and even illuminate, to some extent, the life of the spirit. They begin by tracing the progress of a typical year–January through December–but also by noting, and celebrating at times, the high points of «The Christian Year»: Lent-Easter, Pentecost, Thanksgiving, Advent-Christmas, and Epiphany. Other, more generally them ...
Nobody loves a father like his daughter. That truth comes through powerfully in this memoir. Sarah was enchanted by her father; she loved him with all her young heart. But when she turned five, her father began to do strange things. His bizarre behavior ultimately cost him his job at a major pharmacy in Detroit. The time was the 1930s, with no medication for manic depressive disorder. Sarah joins forces with her mother and younger brother to con ...
The Ten Commandments in Poems will inspire its readers through the felt presence of God perceived from his spoken words revealed to Moses and his children at Mount Sinai around 1440 BC. These poems in rhyme reflect God's laws for man as recorded in the book of Exodus in the Bible, and how God expects each person to live his or her life. ...
This book attempts a close reading of the fiction of Flannery O'Connor, story by story, with one eye on her use of the Bible, and her view of the Bible in relation to her own work. After introductory chapters on O'Connor's markings in her own Roman Catholic Bible, her book reviews in diocesan newspapers, and her impatience with her wayward readers, Michaels looks first at her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, an ...
All of the glory that had broken on me Surrounded me and saw me through and through Although I had no idea how to name A power that engulfed me totally And turned my soul onto another road. –Book XVI, lines 700-704
Preludes is a soul's journey from infancy to adulthood–from the Ohio Valley to south Florida, from grade school to college in New England and travel abroad, and ultimately to a knowledge of its maker. T ...
In this serial work of religious historical fiction, Magda, a «fallen woman» from Berlin turned maidservant in the house of Soren Kierkegaard, seeks the full life that has thus far eluded her. Two journals set in the summer of 1847 record Magda's responses to the Luther Bible, Goethe's Faust, and her elusive yet compelling master, who is simultaneously crafting his Works of Love. Three journals set in the fall, winter, and «people&apos ...
For thousands of years, philosophers, theologians, and poets have tried to pierce through the veil of death to gaze with wonder, fear, and awe on the final and eternal state of the soul. Indeed, the four great epic poets of the Western tradition (Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton) structured their epics in part around a descent into the underworld that is both spiritual and physical, both allegorical and geographical. This book not only considers ...
After Mary, St. Francis is clearly the most popular and influential of all the disciples of Jesus Christ. He embodies the spiritual poverty, humility, and childlikeness which are absolutely essential for anyone who wants to grow. And it is fitting, too, to examine his life in poetry, since Francis is considered by many to be the father of Italian poetry. In these St. Francis Poems, David Craig gives us what literature should: slices of Henry Jam ...
