Poems of Devotion is a collection of the finest recent poems in the devotional mode, which the editor examines in detail in the introductory essay. The seventy-seven poets collected here demonstrate the ongoing vitality of poetry as a spiritual practice, in the long tradition of poets, psalmists, and mystics from the East and West. This is an anthology that will prove deeply rewarding in the classroom, at home, or in the library of your religious institution.
Poetry. Jewish Studies. Philip Terman's latest poetry collection, THIS CRAZY DEVOTION, begins appropriately enough with "Tormented Meshuggenehs," "the crazy sages... / who dervished across the hayfields / and paused to yawp a parable to the cows about the seven beggars..." This passage announces much about the poetry that follows: that its craziness indeed is of the order of devotion in the spiritual sense, rooted in Judaism; and also that it often takes place in bucolic surroundings, rooted in the land. And why is this a little surprising, this conjunction of Jewish life and rural setting? For Terman they are seamless and sacred, and by portraying his Jewishness as woven through a life and landscape familiar to many (non-Jewish) readers, he dispels stereotypes and creates a community of mutual recognition and understanding. That would be virtue enough to applaud this collection, but it offers many other pleasures. "I am talking about this world, there is no other," he declares in the long and lovely meditative "Garden Chronicle" that forms the final section of the book. Such a world it is, full of all of the things to which he is crazily devoted, all of the things he writes about with such acuity and tenderness in these poems: heritage and faith, social justice, poetry, and even (in the title poem) almost meeting Bob Dylan--but foremost, his family and nature, both of which sustain him. He communes with ancestors, a grandfather he was too young to remember, who must have sung to him in Yiddish (and who, he supposes, just might have posed for Chagall). He imagines the radio interview his father might have given, replete with Borscht Belt humor, and recalls going for bagels with "the schlemiel... / who dated your sister-in-law / after your brother died." He devotes the second section, "Of Longing and Chutzpah," to memories of his mother, and in one of the most humorous and poignant moments recalls how in childhood his mother cut his hair to save money, an act Terman likens to "sculpting" him into all the things she might have wished him to be, "the boy she wants to be a mensch." (Based on the accounting he gives here, she succeeded. She also carved out a considerable poet.) Most of all, he writes of "The love of the long married," of children "at the kitchen table / doing homework," waiting on a school bus which arrives bearing all the hopes and happiness in the world. He gives the last word to the daughter whose question "After Later?" signifies "no set time, farther than the horizon, / on top of the sky, around the bend, outside this moment we're in" when, perhaps "all those things they said would happen / must surely have occurred." Such a lovely description of faith, so worthy of devotion.
The Long Devotion is a collection of poems, essays, and writing prompts that celebrates motherhood and creates a space, as poet Molly Spencer has written, to “tell an unlovely truth about family life and not have to take it back.” The poets in this book represent and describe a wide range of experiences. They write about encountering the world anew through their children; intersections of parenting and race; single parenting; adoptive, foster, and step-parenting; life with chronic illness, mental illness, and disability; and the choice to remain childless. The book is divided into four parts. “Difficulty, Ambivalence, and Joy” considers the wonder and challenges of parenting—including infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, and life with children—and trying to write in the midst of those demands. “The Body and the Brain” explores the cerebral and bodily labor of caregiving and writing. “In the World” brings parents and their children into contact with the natural and political landscape. Finally, “Transitions” looks at how parenting and writing change as children grow up. Poems range from linear narratives and imagistic lyric to poetry comics, speculative futures, and experimental forms. Essays and poems suggest ways to write through the disruptions and chaos of family life. Prompts invite readers to use the work in this book as a starting point for their own poetry. As candid accounts of motherhood become more prevalent across literary, pop culture, and digital spaces, the way we talk about writing and mothering is changing. Poets have long challenged traditional motherhood narratives. This book brings together a new generation of exciting and provocative voices for the first time.
In Weak Devotions, his first poetry collection, Luke Hankins engages with great honesty the difficulties and uncertainties inherent in the spiritual life. Far from seeking mere "self-expression," Hankins has honed these explorations into tightly knit meditations and monologues that will resonate with the deepest questions and longings of readers of all backgrounds.
A New York Times Bestseller, chosen as Oprah's "Books That Help Me Through" for Oprah's Book Club “No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive, and Dream Work, one of her exceptional collections. Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.” —The Washington Post “It’s as if the poet herself has sidled beside the reader and pointed us to the poems she considers most worthy of deep consideration.” —Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career. Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years. Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.
"In lyric essays, a story, poems, and photographs, Smith illuminates the whirl of chance and choice that stokes a writer's imagination, recounting her fascination on the eve of a trip to Paris with Simone Weil and an evocative, accidentally discovered film about Stalin's mass deportation of Estonians. In France, a gravestone, a televised figure-skating competition, a meal, and a garden all converge in what becomes Devotion, [a] ... fairy tale about a young, displaced Estonian skater and a solitary dealer in rare objects and arms. This ... fable about creativity and obsession, possession and freedom is followed by a meditation on how a work of art is, for other artists, a call to action"--Booklist, 08/01/2017.
Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār’s poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet ‘speak’ to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women’s studies.
Before the Door of God traces the development of devotional English-language poetry from its origins in ancient hymnody to its current twenty-first-century incarnations. The poems in this volume demonstrate not only that devotional poetry—poetry that speaks to the divine—remains in vigorous practice, but also that the tradition reaches back to the very origins of poetry in English. There is a sense in these pages that the tradition of lyric poetry that developed was nearly inevitable, given the inherent concerns of the genre. Featuring the work of poets over a three-thousand-year period, Before the Door of God places the devotional lyric in its cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts. The volume traces the various influences on this tradition and identifies features that persist in devotional lyric poetry across centuries, cultures, and stylistic differences. To scholars, literary professionals, and general readers who find delight in fine poetry, this anthology offers much to contemplate and discuss.
With From the Devotions, Carl Phillips takes us even further into that dangerous space he has already made his own, where body and soul--ever restless--come explosively together. Speaking to a balance between decorum and pain, he offers here a devotional poetry that argues for faith, even without the comforting gods or the organized structures of revealed truth. Neither sage nor saint nor prophet, the poet is the listener, the mourner, the one who has some access to the maddening quarters of human consciousness, the wry Sibyl. From the Devotions is deeply felt, highly intelligent, and unsentimental, and cements Phillips's reputation as a poet of enormous talent and depth. "In his extraordinary new book of poems, From the Devotions, by far his best, Carl Phillips has done what few of his contemporaries have dared or managed with as much elegant authority. He has plotted here the romantic landscape of desire. Myths are unsheathed and glisten. History is held and pondered. Violence shimmers, desires are silhouetted against the light of love and death. His tone is at once erotic and mystical, hushed and compelling. This book is a blessing, a ravishing, a haunting. I urge you to read it--to succumb to it."--J.D. McClatchy Carl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortège, a Finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Lambda Literary Award. The recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, Phillips is associate professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, St. Louis, where he also directs the creative writing program.
