Sacramental Letters is a spirited exploration of the sacramental themes that underlie some of our more profound literature. While it is a serious literary study, it is also a religious journey into the meaning of the sacraments and the underlying grace that imbues our world. From a uniquely Catholic perspective, the author offers new and challenging insights into the works of Albert Camus, Flannery O'Connor, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Me ...
These poems seek to be playful with faith. Their aim is to expose the underlying sacredness of events that form the liturgy of living and to do so with sensitivity toward mystery, wonder, and occasionally suspicion. Some of them seek to tell stories left untold by the narratives of faith; others prod the narratives of ordinary life to see where faith may be hiding. These poems do not understand faith as an intellectual choice but rather as an in ...
Swan Bones is a book about small towns and the people who inhabit them. Its poems follow the author from the hills of the Mohawk Valley to the cornfields of East Central Indiana, where she's lived for nearly a decade. They deal in everyday ironies, and it is in these spaces that Bowman crafts a unique vision defined by her stark honesty, distinctive lyricism, and persistent hope. She proffers quartz crystals despite layoffs; moonflowers, wh ...
This debut collection of sonnets explores the cryptic personality of Jesus of Nazareth. Reimagining pivotal moments in his life story from unlikely perspectives–including those of Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, a Pharisee, and even Satan–the poems invite deeper engagement with the Gospel narrative. Jesus emerges from this mosaic-like treatment as a conscientious friend, steely reformer, and inspired poet–as well as an ordinary, troubled man. W ...
These poems are not muscular, literary, or award-winning. Instead they are slightly dangerous, filled with banana peels, sharp objects, reflex hammers, and various items you could not send through US mail. They also contain stories, possibly one of the most dangerous things ever invented. There are stories about trees, people, other people, artwork, near-misses of artwork, bears, barns, and a convention of angels. There are stories of forgivenes ...
Jesus is God, and we as necessarily devotional Christian poets must not shy away from that fact. These poems try to celebrate that reality, who He is, without sacrificing literary quality. They are distinctly American (baseball, jazz, and free verse) in form, Beat in the line of Mary Fabilli, Thomas Merton, and Daniel «stick it to the man» Berrigan. And they try to accomplish this without sacrificing humor and romp. May these, and all Christian ...
C.S. Lewis wrote many great words, but not everything you see with his name on it is from the famed author of the Narnia books. Seventy-five quotations are presented that have an association in one way or another with a host of names, including: Ryan Seacrest, Anthony Hopkins, Max Lucado, Rick Warren, and Tim Allen! Learn the three most common ways Lewis is misrepresented: 1.Falsely Attributed Quotes: Expressions that are NOT by him. ...
Ash & Embers embodies the inherent messiness of life's journey, sorting detritus from treasures, identifying and naming memory, finding categories that reflect life's winding pathways and its treacherous footing. Taking his various roles–son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, neighbor, teacher, citizen, believer, writer, and reader–as narrative stances, Zoller considers the details of life and its larger forces. Thematically c ...
If you have never been inside of a prison, there are things you will not know about the community there. You may guess at them, but that is not the same. What it feels like. What it sounds like. What goes on there; these all define portions of what it is. These definitions, or parameters of life inside, come to you quite viscerally. You feel them in and through your skin before you actually give word or shape to understanding them. You sense bef ...