Poetry Books

There are many wonderful books in the world that address and teach how a good Catholic should think. However, it is important that a person not only think like a Catholic, but feel like a Catholic. Mr. Coulombe's poems convey the feelings that millennial Catholics regularly have: feelings of angst regarding the future, but also that of hope; feelings of righteousness and feelings of awe over the majesty and wonders of Catholic tradition. The White Cockade is filled with bite-sized poems that ...

Recognized by religious scholars and readers alike, Poems Every Catholic Should Know is an essential anthology for anyone desiring to explore the finest Christian verse of the second millennium. This uplifting collection brings together some of the most beloved works written by faithful followers of Christ. From High Middle Ages figures like Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Dante and Chaucer to sixteenth-century missionaries like Teresa Of Ávila, John Of The Cross and John Donne, this ...

Monastic Tradition invites readers—especially those new to the spiritual life—into a deeper search for God through three classic monastic “books”: the book of nature, the book of Scripture, and the book of one’s own lived experience. Drawing from thirty years of monastic life, Sr. Laurentia weaves these strands together in a series of meditative poems that resonate with the rhythms of both the natural and liturgical seasons. Beginning with Advent, the poems unfold through the year, reflecting...

My adult daughter, who still hasn't gotten confirmed, recently delivered some incisive car commentary on Catholic male radio voices. "They sound like pleasant eunuchs; not alive, self-consciously holy."As I sit here, I'm reminded of T group facilitators back in my undergrad days: gentle healers, seeped in their own goodness. The artificial smiles, the invite to come and join THAT party!Well, we're all sinners.And that's the point I want to make in these sonnets. We all reach for Jesus, and we...

One of the most eminent poets and essayists of the last century in Italy, Tito Casini (1897-1987) devoted the last years of his life to a passionate protest against the desecration of the centuries-old Roman liturgy, the spiritual home of millions and a cultural treasure that could never be rivaled, let alone replaced. His defense of tradition was unique in mode, combining lampoon, lamentation, and lyricism in a philosophic poetry that transcends mere polemic. Perhaps the most unique of his w...

While much modern poetry seems to deny or ignore our culture's religious heritage, Gene Fendt's Eternal Life and Other Poems boldly celebrates biblical figures, Church fathers, and saints. They grapple with the glittering, erotic, crisp cruelty of the physical world-all the time demanding the angelic blessing of the numinous within.

At a time when poetry has little regard for anything beyond the commonplace realities of everyday perception and sentiment, these studies propose a restoration of balance as between outer and inner worlds. For too long, in the wake of our attempt at a rational, scientific civilization, it has been readily assumed that the centre of gravity of reality and truth falls within the realm of the physical world. But for the poets discussed in these pages the opposite is the case. For them the centre...

St Therese of Lisieux is one of the best-loved saints of the Church. Her writings are amongst the most popular works of spirituality the world has ever known. Admitted to Carmel in 1888 at the age of fifteen, she only lived nine more years. St Therese wrote with utter simplicity, and yet, because of her outstanding spiritual discernment, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church. Her gifts as a poet, however, have remained largely unknown to English-speaking readers - here for the...

This collection of poems verses the mystery of God and Creation. Exploring the stories and characters of Scripture, Classical history and myth, the reader confronts the glory of God and is plunged into the depths of the human condition. This work deals with the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the ridiculous. Twenty-first century readers are confronted by their own needs and greeds reflected in the foundations of western civilisation. There are also more directly personal poems, of lov...

"Nature and history, the Liturgy and the Kalendar, contemporary events both public and personal-all snake their way through the thickets of metaphor in these poems. And the relation between time and Eternity is never far away."-AIDAN NICHOLS, OP, formerly Pope John Paul II Memorial Lecturer in Roman Catholic Theology, University of Oxford"Anna Rist's second volume of poems is a joy to read. The collection exalts not just in the Body of Christ but in people and places of importance to her. All...

This book invites the reader into a cloister of poems, there to look with eyes of faith through the arches of rhythm and rhyme onto the wide vistas, terrible chasms, and hazy mountains of Mystery, Beauty, and Love. Written by monks of Silverstream Priory, some poems let memory and imagination search the corners of the earth, there to glean the sorrows, hopes, and joys of men, and so present them to the Father. Others draw from the deep wells of tradition, with verse translations of ancient La...

(and A Young Poet's Elegy to the Court of God) A Traditional Play in Blank Verse The preternaturally great poet Orpheus has responded to the loss of his wife Eurydice to the Underworld by forsaking the society of his fellow men in Thrace, where he was a poet-king, and endlessly wandering through field and forest, using his poetic genius to lament his loss. Apollo, the god of poetry, urges him to give up his excessive mourning and return to Thrace and once more sing the deeds of the great hero...

Seneca was not only Rome's major Stoic philosopher. He was its great tragic playwright. Classics of Latin literature, Seneca's dramas also inspired the revival of tragic theater in the Renaissance. They served as models for Shakespeare, Kyd, Racine, Corneille, and Calderon. Dana Gioia's new book provides two ways of approaching Seneca-the critical and the creative. The book begins with a compelling account of Seneca's remarkable life in Imperial Rome. It interweaves the Stoic's roles as philo...

Poems by Saint John of the Cross Regarded by many as one of the finest Spanish poets, the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross wrote sublime poems that chronicle the soul's purificatory pilgrimage through the dark night of the soul to the joy of mystical union with the Creator. To translate such works, with their passionate, intimate intensity, requires both boldness and delicacy. The translator of poetry faces many challenges. As the late poet Timothy Murphy notes in his introduction, s...

 "Blessed be the Child who today delights Bethlehem. Blessed be the Newborn Who today made the humanity young again. Blessed be the Fruit Who Bowed Himself down for our hunger. Blessed be the Gracious One Who suddenly enriched all of our poverty and filled our need." Ephrem the Syrian (c.306-373) Ephrem was born in the Mesopotamian city of Nisibis toward the end of the third century. An outpost of the Roman Empire, Nisibis and its Christian citizens were to be formed by the reign of Constant...

Poems by David Craig "This is a book of joy, an Easter of jubilation. Holiness infuses these poems: holy flights of imagination, holy laughter, holy living in the everyday, and holy resurrection hope. Even the punishing season of winter is 'a glass of chilled champagne.' And angels everywhere-materializing to sing a Bach mass in the middle of the night on an empty street, or maybe dropping in for a summer swim. The energy, the down-to-earth reverence-is all of a piece, creating an abundance o...

Advent Poems Each Advent season is new. Those most recent have been tumultuous: COVID, bitterly cold snows, visionaries speaking frankly of a coming apocalypse. But other things as well: our own issues, the creeping age factor, the death of loved ones. Advent, like a creaking old metal gate, corrects us every time. It lets us know that only one thing matters: the stable, that little crib where cows chewed hay. Children, and childlike adults, still find all the consolation they need there. We ...