Before the Door of God by
A diverse and imaginative selection of works from the long tradition of devotional poetry in English 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.
Chapters into Verse: Poetry in English Inspired by the Bible by
For generations, poets have turned to the Bible for insight and inspiration. What did so many creative minds find in scripture? Is the Bible still a vital source of poetic inspirations?Chapters Into Verse is the first comprehensive collection ever made of poems written in English inspired by the Bible. A groundbreaking anthology, it introduces readers to a distinct heritage of English poetry: the scriptural tradition. Though frequently ignored and sometimes suppressed, thistradition rivals the classical and is every bit as venerable.Drawing a unique map of the history of English poetry, the two volumes of Chapters Into Verse survey and define the literary legacy of the Scriptures from the fourteenth century to the present. Each volume is arranged in scriptural order, and each poem is preceded by the biblical passage thatinspired it. Thus readers can conveniently witness the various ways sacred text has sparked the imagination of poets throughout the ages.Volume II follows the Gospels (harmonized) through Revelation. The collection features verses both famous and unfamiliar, from John Donne's meditative masterpieces to D.H. Lawrence's quirky expostulations. The editors have included poems by virtually all the prominent religious poets--amongthem, John Milton, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Edward Taylor, Christopher Smart, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Included, too, are devotional and visionary works from a wide range of vintage poets--Edmund Spenser, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, ChristinaRossetti, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Browning.Proving that the Bible is just as powerful a source of inspiration today as it was in the past, the collection assembles a mixed congregation of modern and contemporary poets, such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Delmore Schwartz, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Countee Cullen, WilliamButler Yeats, John Berryman, Robert Graves, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Lee Murray, Amy Clampitt, and Richard Wilbur.Of enduring interest to readers of both scripture and literature, this anthology illuminates key passages of the New Testament. The measured speech and inspired leaps of poetry offer a spirited alternative to the textual exegesis usually supplied by prose commentary. As such, Chapters IntoVerse is truly a poets' Bible. In selection after selection, readers will encounter an astonishing variety of religious experiences, as a host of poets from many eras and many backgrounds respond to Holy Scripture spiritually, profoundly, and imaginatively.
Spiritual Sonnets by
Born into a wealthy family in Toulouse, Gabrielle de Coignard (ca. 1550-86) married a prominent statesman in 1570. Widowed three years later, with two young daughters to raise, Coignard turned to writing devotional verse to help her cope with her practical and spiritual struggles. Spiritual Sonnets presents the first English translation of 129 of Coignard's highly autobiographical poems, giving us a startlingly intimate view into the life and mind of this Renaissance woman. The sonnets are all written "in the shadow of the Cross" and include elegies, penitential lyrics, Biblical meditations, and more. Rich with emotion, Coignard's poems reveal anguished moments of loneliness and grief as well as ecstatic experiences of mystical union. They also reveal her mastery of sixteenth-century literary conventions and spiritual traditions. This edition, printed in bilingual format with Melanie E. Gregg's translations facing the French originals, will be welcomed by teachers and students of poetry, French literature, women's studies, and religious and Renaissance studies.
The Religious Poetry of el'azar Ben Ya'aqov Ha-Bavli by
This volume presents the reader with a fascinating collection of hymns composed by El'azar the Babylonian, an Arab-Jewish poet who is active in Baghdad during the first half of the 13th century. His religious oeuvre consists of dozens of hymns, coming down to us from the treasures of the Cairo Genizah and the Firkovicz Collections. His compositions provide a cross-section of genres and liturgical destinations. El'azar's devotional hymnology is characterised by a striking spiritual tendency which reveals his familiarity with contemporary Sufism in both Muslim and Jewish circles.
Paper Bridges by
Kadya Molodwsky (1894-1975) was among the most accomplished and prolific of modern Yiddish poets, having published six major books of poetry, as well as fiction, plays, essays, and children's tales. This is a retrospective survey of her poetry and a book-length translation of her work into English. The introduction discusses her place in Yiddish poetry, with annotations on the poems, and a section of photographs.
The Dream of the Poem by
Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time. Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some four hundred poems by fifty-four poets, and including a panoramic historical introduction, short biographies of each poet, and extensive notes. (The original Hebrew texts are available on the Princeton University Press Web site.) By far the most potent and comprehensive gathering of medieval Hebrew poems ever assembled in English, Cole's anthology builds on what poet and translator Richard Howard has described as "the finest labor of poetic translation that I have seen in many years" and "an entire revelation: a body of lyric and didactic verse so intense, so intelligent, and so vivid that it appears to identify a whole dimension of historical consciousness previously unavailable to us." The Dream of the Poem is, Howard says, "a crowning achievement."