The republication of this book resurrects a landmark volume hailed when published as "the first major effort to assess modern poetry from the point of view of its contributions to the spiritual life of our times." Resting on the assumption that poetry offers "a mirror in which the world can know itself and in which it can read its deepest dilemmas and its deepest omens," Wilder explores the work of W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, W. H. Auden, Kenneth Patchen, and Robinson Jeffers, among others. Wilder investigates the ethical and religious attitudes behind these works, the sources behind them, and their importance for religious and spiritual life in the modern era. The author also discusses the work of leading critics and provides a guide and bibliography to the sources of modernism's roots in America and abroad, as well as biographical sketches of the poets and critics discussed.

The republication of this book resurrects a landmark volume hailed when published as "the first major effort to assess modern poetry from the point of view of its contributions to the spiritual life of our times." Resting on the assumption that poetry offers "a mirror in which the world can know itself and in which it can read its deepest dilemmas and its deepest omens," Wilder explores the work of W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, W. H. Auden, Kenneth Patchen, and Robinson Jeffers, among others. Wilder investigates the ethical and religious attitudes behind these works, the sources behind them, and their importance for religious and spiritual life in the modern era. The author also discusses the work of leading critics and provides a guide and bibliography to the sources of modernism's roots in America and abroad, as well as biographical sketches of the poets and critics discussed.

The Spiritual Poems of Rumi is a beautiful and elegantly illustrated gift book of Rumi's spiritual poems translated by Nader Khalili, geared for readers searching for a stronger spiritual core.

"[When we read and write poetry,] it is as if a long-settled cloud in our mind suddenly dissipates, and we are divine once again." -- from the Introduction Poetry is the language of devotion in prayer, chant, and song. Reading and writing poetry creates clarity, deepens and expands spiritual inquiry, and cultivates wisdom, compassion, self-confidence, patience, and love. In author Robert McDowell's words, poetry makes you into a tuning fork of the Divine. But poetry has disappeared over the centuries from religious ceremonies, academic curricula, and public discourse. In Poetry as Spiritual Practice, the first inspirational and instructional guide to combine poetry and spirituality, McDowell restores poetry as the natural language of spiritual practice and invites you to recognize poetry as "the pure sound and shape of your spirit." Vividly illustrated with a wide range of poems from all historical eras and poetic traditions, numerous religions and faiths, and McDowell's own and his students' work, Poetry as Spiritual Practice will reintroduce you to the unique pleasure of verse. And meditations throughout will allow you to integrate reading and writing poetry into your spiritual journeys and daily life. Since many of us have long forgotten, or never learned, the mechanics and terminology of poetry -- trochaic feet and tropes trip us up; we can't tell a villanelle from its shorter cousin, rondeau; and a terza rima may as well be a tanka -- this is also an instructional handbook on reading and writing poetry. An engaging guide through the landscape of world poetry, McDowell argues along the way for the many practical benefits of poetic literacy. Making poetry an essential part of daily rituals, aspirations, and intentions will put you on the path to greater meaning, growth, and peace in your life. At once an engaging technical primer, a profound meditation on the relationship between poetry and the Divine, and an inspirational guide for integrating poetry into spiritual practice, Poetry as Spiritual Practice will become a cherished companion.

Poetry. Women's Studies. This masterful debut reveals for each reader new depths of nature, self, family, and world by opening our tiniest and most intimate perceptions. Colburn's poetics balances image with absence, silence with sound. These elegant poems take on the questions of our day: can we have our sweet domestic lives when the life of the planet hangs in the balance? What does it mean to create and nurture a new human being in this perilous age?

Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenth century because the depictions of God as a character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early nineteenth century, American Protestant theologians downplayed biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned his character according to their own notions, stressing emotional singularity. These notions came from many sources, but the major influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have made God appealing in the mid-1800s, but by the end of the century, these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly came to seem flat and vague. Despite this, both liberal and conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God throughout the twentieth century. Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in romanticism, the literary style of characterization that supplanted neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized emotional complexity and resonated with biblical depictions of God. A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. G. T. Shedd, and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from romanticism. But their strange and sometimes shocking depictions of God were largely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use "theological" as a pejorative term, implying that an argument is needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a greaterin understanding of the relationship between theology and literature. Recovering the lost literary power of American Protestantism, he claims, will make the character of God more compelling and help modern readers appreciate the peculiar power of the biblical characterization of God.

'A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized' Rowan Williams, TLS This rich and surprising anthology is a holistic, global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BCE Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this selection presents a number of canonical figures like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized, diverse poets going up to the present day. Together they show the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the spiritual, across place and time.

A “raw and honest” (Los Angeles Review of Books) memoir from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Childhood, Transcendence, and Art -- 2. Spiritual Functions of Art -- 3. Elemental Meaning and Gerard Manley Hopkins -- 4. Emily Dickinson and the Unknown God -- 5. A Pattern of Timeless Moments: T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets -- 6. Art and Spiritual Growth -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

The short poems in this book reflect the spiritual insights of some of the greatest poets, saints, and sages know to Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Native American traditions.