The anthology spans the first ten years of the poetry series at Paraclete Press. Included are poems by Phyllis Tickle, Scott Cairns, Paul Mariani, Anna Kamienska, Fr. John-Julian, SAID, Bonnie Thurston, Greg Miller, William Woolfitt, Rami Shapiro, Thomas Lynch, Paul Quenon, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

Winner of the 2020 Paraclete Poetry Prize, Litany of Flights is a luminous examination of the journey of the soul, from moments of loss to moments of incandescent transformation. These poems remind us to behold the extraordinary in the ordinary, and that the secret workings of the divine occur even through the difficult: “the painful paring of your hollow bones has made you light.” Drawing on the beauty of the natural world, the devastating effects of drought and wildfires, tender moments of daily experience, and lessons of the saints, the poet creates a landscape of light and darkness, with unexpected turns into divine presence and absence. Through a spiral of red-tailed hawks, the nest of a mourning dove, the parting of waters, and the ripeness of a persimmon, this shimmering collection invites the reader to singular and transfiguring flight. Litany of Flights (from the forthcoming collection) First, the winged movement, steady, forward. Scrub jays in flitting progress, hawks in predator glide, a ringing up, a knife-sharp slope down. Second, the effortless type, wind-splayed, motionless pinions in thermal recline, as the Psalmist says, blessings breeze his love even in sleep. Third, the hungry, against the gale, the destination singular and the sun dipping crimson. Fourth, the metallic, business or pleasure. Fifth, the whirring kind, all hummingbird. A picnic, apples and chocolate in the garden with roses, both flower and child. You miss it when it’s gone. Sixth, a baffling flight of stairs, winding upward, passage and yet vehicle, spiraling to unseen landings—hope courses in the kaleidoscopic lights. Seventh, soar to the sun. Eighth, melt in bitter hubris. You know the story. Ninth, escape. A flight out of Egypt, a path through the sea cleared by divine hand. The times you ran, the times you were left behind in lament. Tenth, only rotting in the belly of a whale tames your stubborn turn from Nineveh. Eleventh, flights of despair and of yearning, two sides of one letting go, hard-earned release back into the wild, unbound by expectation, featherlike. Twelfth, in a moment, caught up high by the Beloved, the one making all things work together, wings, body, arch, air—caught up, like the Shulamite bride, to regions beyond aeronautical wisdom, transported in joy. See, he says, the painful paring of your hollow bones has made you light.

The Chance of Home Somewhere there must be where no one wonders whether you belong... So begins the title poem of this remarkable collection from a popular poet and scholar of mysticism. These poems remind us that "home" shapes us, not as a particular place; home is a way of being in this world, for us and for the creatures with whom we share it. It finds expression in the inner light that carries us through dark seasons and in what inspires us to risk life in the face of death. Home comes to us in the unexpected glimpses we sometimes have of a wholeness resonant enough to hold us amid fragments. Many of these poems come from a long looking at the familiar and the ordinary, a patient listening for traces of a beauty that might still save us--in the rhythms of a street musician plying his trade in a Lisbon subway, the radiance of birdsong interrupting the night's last hour, and the tolling of an old temple bell that "still sings in the silences." They ponder the resilience that lies at the heart of the natural world, as well as in our desire to thrive amid the distractions that pressure us in our lives. In an over-saturated age like ours, they invite us to linger at the edges of silence, and wonder what it means that we are not made for reason alone, but "for what song can bring of solace and delight."

What Will Soon Take Place is an imaginative journey through the book of Revelation. It offers a poet's view of the prophetic, not in the sense of seeking out clues to the "end times," but a means of taking this strange, fantastic book of scripture and letting it read its way into personal lives.

First published in hardcover as Love’s Immensity, this powerful book of selections from the mystics East and West, rendered into poetry, is now available in paperback for the first time.

Learning about the ancient Jewish tradition of midrash, a rabbinic form of textual interpretation that seeks and imagines answers to unanswerable questions, felt to Amy Bornman like a poetic invitation to re-engage with the Bible in a new way. There is a Future: A Year of Daily Midrash – an award-winner in the Paraclete Poetry Prize competition – grew from a yearlong project to read the Bible daily, and write daily midrashic poems in response to the readings—to honor the text by wondering about, and struggling with, it. By engaging particular passages of scripture across the Old and New Testaments directly, these poems imagine new dimensions of the text, and make vivid connections to the world as it is now and to the author’s own life—emerging at year’s end with new hope in a future that at times feels impossible, as the days pile on days and the text’s enduring questions continue to ring.

Edited by poets about poets, this is a chronologically organized anthology of the work of major poets born after 1920. Part of the Penguin Academics series, it provides an introduction to the study of contemporary American literature.

Who was Saint Francis? Today he is most often a sweet ceramic statue in a garden, a sentimentalized romantic figure. But A Gathering of Larks, containing forty personal letters from Abigail Carroll to Francis, reveals him to be a complex man who lived a fascinating life of radical faith. These letters—part devotion, part historical biography, part contemporary engagement, and part inspiration—reveal Carroll's curiosity and wonder about Francis. She celebrates his whimsical idealism and impetuousness, explores his spirituality and commitment to poverty, and sometimes even questions him. She also uses Francis as a sounding board for larger questions about the world—and, through her own experience, explores how brokenness makes experiencing redemption possible. As beautiful as it is insightful, alight with a pilgrim's growing sense of discovery, A Gathering of Larks has both range and depth that will uplift readers and challenge them to better understand this singular saint and how he might speak to and shape their way of living in today's world.

Meister Eckhart (1260 -1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness. However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. Eckhart wrote at a time - much like our own - when society appeared to be coming apart at the seams. In the midst of all that chaos and uncertainty, he captured the many forms and stages of the love of God, the mystic path, and the journey of transformation - in language so startling that he, too, was often accused of heresy. Now, seven centuries later, this fresh, stunning rendering of his work translates the essence of one of Christianity's greatest poetic and spiritual voices. Here is a book that conveys the heart of Eckhart's teaching on what it means to love God and embark on an authentic spiritual journey - a journey that is characterized by mystery, paradox, and an embrace of the unknown.

Dunstan Thompson was an American poet of great promise who burst onto the Anglo-American literary scene during World War II. In the words of one contemporary, Thompson was one of the rising "stars of modern poetry," a writer who might one day join the pantheon of poets like Hart Crane, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Dylan Thomas. And yet Thompson more or less disappeared from public view by the early 1950s. After publishing two volumes of poetry, a travel book, and a novel, Thompson had only a few scattered magazine publications until his death. A posthumous volume was privately printed in England, but the circulation was small. Here at Last is Love: Selected Poems is the definitive, authorized selection of Thompson's best work, revealing to a wider public the literary vision of a "lost master." The introduction by editor Gregory Wolfe offers the first extended narrative in print relating Thompson's complex personal story. The afterword by distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia provides a thorough--and just--assessment of his poetic achievement. Thompson's early poetry was not only technically innovative, but saturated with the language and the drama of gay experience during World War II. Yet just a few years after the war, Thompson returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood, only to find that his new poetic voice was out of sync with the times. In spite of the difficulties he faced in his later years, Thompson did not give up writing poetry, continuing to produce quality work. After his reconversion, the poetry shifted in tone and form from a lush romanticism to an urbane classicism. The later work covers a wide range of subjects, from studies of historical figures to devotional lyrics. This volume will not only stir up the debate about Thompson's sexual and religious passions, but also help complete the history of twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry, finally making his work available to scholars and lovers of poetry everywhere.