Poetry
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Which Seeds Will Grow
$21.00Add to cartA new collection of poems by Palestinian-American Catholic poet Andrew Calis, Which Seeds Will Grow? ?finds hope in the Holy Land.
Grappling with his identity as a Christian Palestinian American, Andrew Calis recalls his father who saw Israeli jets swoop over his house in Jerusalem and a military helicopter fire bullets into his front yard. The same father who wouldn’t teach his children Arabic, for fear that they would have accented English, who kept his past close to his chest–unknown to his son. He recounts the death of his grandfather, a grandfather who would beat his father, and for whom he could not fully mourn because Arab men don’t cry.
Andrew Calis digs through the pain of his family and of his homeland to find the fragile seed of contained life and delicate hope for the Holy Land–and reflects on how tenderly that seed must be nurtured.
Steeped in wonder, Which Seeds Will Grow? explores the past and the present, from ancient Jerusalem to Baltimore’s gardens and alleys through the lens of a Palestinian American. The poems are patient, waiting for seasons to end, waiting for space to expand outward, and waiting for light to touch the earth. Despite the difficulty of waiting, readers will find hope in hopelessness and comfort in the contemplation of the world and its sacred mysteries.
From Which Seeds Will Grow?
Planting a Garden
Stealing clippings from neighbors’ yards
And smiling as they grew their own blooms
In the safe and hidden rooms where we
Keep watch on them like they are our children.
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Nothing grew. We knew this was
A possibility, had read
It sometimes takes two years,
And we hoped in spite of only dirt
For the green that could be anything.Perhaps we dug too shallow or too close
To the shade, or stepped where we had already planted,
Either crushing roots or breaking their curled
First shoots before they broke the surface.
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So when one survived, wove a green line
Of its own, thinly sprouting something unknowable, I ran
Inside and for a moment felt
What John must have felt
Leaving Peter, old and unsteadily running,
And running breathlessly
To tell everyone —
Everyone
What had happened
And how you wouldn’t believe your eyes. -
Classic Christmas : A Collection Of Timeless Stories And Poems
$16.99Add to cartThis beautiful, giftable Christmas collection features 15 old-fashioned works from classic authors who invite you to a feast of holiday nostalgia.
A Classic Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, L. M. Montgomery, Hans Christian Andersen, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol, the world-renowned holiday favorite). The volume also includes poems from Clement Clarke Moore, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Christina Rossetti, Margaret Deland, Libbie C. Baer, and Anna de Bremont. This collection is a timeless reminder that the heart of the holiday never changes.
*Affordable and giftable size
*Presentation page for writing a meaningful message for gifting
*Perfect as a stocking stuffer, white-elephant gift, or host gift
*Filled with hopeful and encouraging Christmas stories and poems
*Makes a lovely keepsake companion to A Vintage Christmas and A Timeless ChristmasFilled with stories that have been part of the Christmas season for generations, A Classic Christmas is a unique collection of Christmas tales, reflections, and poems from beloved authors across the centuries and makes the perfect gift for any reader in your life.
*Revisit the most beloved Christmas story of all time, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
*Delight in the wonder, joy, and humor of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
*Discover the magical story of a tree whose secret thoughts come to life during the holidays in Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Fir Tree.”
*Share with your family the beauty and warmth of the Yuletide season with poetry from Paul Laurence Dunbar, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and many others.
This beautiful treasury will take you back to firesides, simple gifts, and cozy family moments of Christmases past as you cherish the timeless truths and joys of the season.
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Counting Winter
$18.99Add to cartAn atmospheric tribute to the beauty of winter and its creatures.
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One red fox walks across the white snow–quietly stalking winter. Two ravens croak and gurgle–raucously talking winter. Three snowshoe hares hop on big paws–silently tracking winter. Four red squirrels feast at their midden full of cones–hungrily cracking winter. Wherever you look, another creature is making its mark on the snow-covered season.Inspired by the author’s years in Alaska, this lyrical book celebrates the rhythms of the tundra and its inhabitants. Poetic lines and stunning scratchboard art create the perfect read for chilly days–whether winter is just beginning or just starting to melt into spring.
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Fast Cheetah Slow Tortoise
$18.99Add to cartA whimsical portrait of animals–and antonyms–in action.
?How do you contrast creatures as different as cheetahs and tortoises, or as similar as butterflies and moths? In this lively book of poetry, antonym pairs introduce thirty-two members of the animal kingdom. Each spread presents the voices of two unique creatures: are you more like an obedient sheep or a rebellious goat? What about a tidy pig or a messy warthog? A bossy gorilla or a meek monkey?
With bold, vibrant art and amusing free verse, this collection is a memorable way to explore vocabulary, opposites, and animal traits with young readers. Every flip of the page brings a new set of faces–and another chance to laugh.
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Dont Take Your Elephant To School
$16.99Add to cartHave you ever thought about the rules a lion would need to follow in school? Or considered the worst thing about a queue?
You haven’t? Then these poems are for you?
In this collection of over 70 poems, Steve Turner returns to much of the word play and wit of his best-selling The Day I Fell Down the Toilet. Using the alphabet as a framework, he has written three poems for each letter (including X and Z!). This highly entertaining book will delight all Turner fans and teachers will appreciate the varied poetry forms (shape, limerick, nonsense, free, rhyming, etc).
The fun, witty poems – often written from a thought-provoking point of view – cover such diverse subjects as aardvarks, cars, sausages, love and yo-yos, so there’s sure to be something to interest both boys and girls.
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Dad Youre Not Funny And Other Poems
$16.99Add to cartThe second hilarious poetry collection from the author of The Day I Fell Down the ToiletThe second hilarious poetry collection from the author of The Day I Fell Down the Toilet
Have you ever formed a secret club with friends? Or witnessed the flight of a cow?
Have you ever heard a duck whistle? You haven’t? Then read this book now.As always, Steve Turner’s poems present a fresh and quirky view on life. Many of the poems in this collection are about childhood: school and holidays, dreams and monsters, food, friends…
This collection of over seventy poems will entertain and interest children both in the classroom and at home. The themes and ideas are thought-provoking as well as witty and fun, and the entertaining cartoons reflect the mood of the poems.
Steve Turner is the award-winning author of the best-selling poetry collection The Day I Fell Down the Toilet.
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Day I Fell Down The Toilet And Other Poems
$16.99Add to cartHave you ever been punched by a cabbage or fallen head first down the loo?
Have you ever had fun with a poem? You haven’t? Then this book’s for you.
Whacky poems that take a roller-coaster ride from the crazy corners of dreams to the big questions of life.
This collection of over seventy poems for children by Steve Turner is regularly in the best-seller lists. Full of wit and fun, his thought-provoking poetry has been used by teachers in classrooms and entertained children at home over the years. These poems make an instant impact, as the themes and ideas in them offer lots of food for thought for young minds.
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Christ Our All
$24.99Add to cartSteadfast upon the Rock I stand,
Upheld by God’s almighty hand.
In him I move, I live, or die,
In him I’ll dwell beyond the sky.Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a beloved and celebrated preacher and pastor of the 19th century. But unbeknownst to many, in the quiet habitation of his private life, his prayers poured forth in poetry.
Edited by Spurgeon scholar Geoffrey Chang, Christ Our All: Poems for the Christian Pilgrim allows readers to discover the poetic soul of Charles Spurgeon. The collection includes 186 never-before-published poems penned by the “Prince of Preachers” and 43 poems and hymns published during his lifetime. Written as private prayers or devotional exercises, these poems express Spurgeon’s sorrows, hopes, and love for God with striking imagery and bold conviction.
Christ Our All serves as more than a mere anthology–it is a remarkable treasure awaiting discovery. This volume is meant to be read devotionally, and each poem includes a reference to a passage of Scripture for reflection and prayer. Delve into the hidden depths of a beloved preacher’s heart and embark on a poetic pilgrimage with Christ Our All, a remarkable treasure that will ignite your soul and leave you yearning for a deeper connection with God.
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Be Thou My Song
$12.95Add to cart“Be Thou my Song” is a line from seventeenth-century poet Edward Taylor. In his meditation on Philippians 2:9, Taylor finds that his ability to compose poetry falls short of his desire to glorify God, so he prays, “That I thy glorious Praise may Trumpet right, / Be thou my Song, and make Lord, mee thy Pipe.” In one way or another, all of the poets included in the chapters of Be Thou My Song strive to convey their wonder for God’s unending grace and mercy in their own limited ways; He provides the content, the song, while the writers are merely the conduits, the pipe. By reading these poems carefully, we can share in their gratitude for how God cares for us, both here on earth and in our final heavenly home.
In each chapter, you will find a poem, presented in its entirety, followed by an exploration of that poem and some questions to contemplate afterwards. The goal of these explorations is to provide readers with a deeper appreciation, a deeper understanding, and a deeper love of what each poet has given to us.
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Timeless Love : Poems, Stories,And Letters
$17.99Add to cartThis beautiful, giftable collection celebrates the beauty and the agony of love through classic poems, stories, and letters from beloved writers.
Because it defines human existence, love is one of art’s favorite subjects. Timeless Love: Poems, Stories, and Letters celebrates the mysterious nature of love and passion by bringing together classic works by beloved writers through the ages.
Including stories, poems, and letters from Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barret Browning, John Keats, Edith Wharton, and more, this collection explores how each love is singular-yet love itself is universal. Hand-selected and presented in a lovely, gift-worthy package, Timeless Love will make a romantic, thoughtful gift for the reader in your life or the perfect addition to a collector’s shelf.
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Vintage Christmas : A Collection Of Classic Stories And Poems
$16.99Add to cartThis beautiful, giftable Christmas collection features 23 old-fashioned works from classic authors who invite you to a feast of holiday nostalgia.
A Vintage Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Ralph Henry Barbour, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, L. M. Montgomery, and William Dean Howells, as well as poems from Eliza Cook, Christina Rossetti, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joyce Kilmer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This collection is a timeless reminder that the heart of the holiday never changes.
*Affordable and giftable size.
*Presentation page for writing a meaningful message for gifting.
*Perfect as a stocking stuffer, white-elephant gift, or host gift.
*Filled with hopeful and encouraging Christmas stories.
*Makes a lovely keepsake companion to A Classic Christmas and A Timeless Christmas.Filled with stories that have been part of the Christmas season for generations, A Vintage Christmas is a unique collection of Christmas tales, reflections, and poems from beloved authors across the centuries and makes the perfect gift for any reader in your life.
*Discover a charming story from L. M. Montgomery about love and sacrifice in a modest log house.
*See Christmas through the eyes of a child in a New England colonial village with Harriet Beecher Stowe.
*Remember the reason Christ came to earth in the poetry of Anne Bront.
*Share with your family the delightful letter Mark Twain wrote as Santa Claus to his three-year-old daughter.
This beautiful treasury will take you back to firesides, simple gifts, and cozy family moments of Christmases past as you cherish the timeless truths and joys of the season.
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Touch The Earth
$18.99Add to cartGather it from memory.
Let it touch the earth.In Touch the Earth, Drew Jackson continues the project he began in God Speaks Through Wombs, reflecting on the Gospel of Luke through poetry. Touch the Earth picks up in chapter nine and continues through the end of Luke’s Gospel. Part protest poetry, part biblical commentary, Jackson presents the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the fresh words / that speak of / things impossible.
From the feeding of the multitude (The best hosts always provide / take home containers”) to the resurrection of Jesus (the belly of mother Earth / is, indeed, a womb . . . the humus of life is where we become fully human), this collection helps us hear the hum of deliverance–against all hope–that’s been in the gospel all along.
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I Wish For You
$14.99Add to cartIdeal for gift giving, this charming and colorful gift book inspires readers and gives them the words to express their heartfelt hopes and well wishes for their loved ones.
What do you wish for your friends and family? Greater joy? Fearless freedom to be who they are? Strength to persevere? Wisdom for that crucial next step in life?
Whatever you’re longing to say, I Wish for You contains uplifting affirmations that celebrate the best that life has to offer. Its universal themes of chasing your dreams, following your heart, and facing challenges with courage and conviction apply to a wide variety of special occasions, including graduations, baby showers, weddings, and general encouragement during tough times.
When you’re wanting to send more than just a card, give this beautifully written and illustrated gift book to brighten the day of someone you love.
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Fatherless Child : You Are Never Alone
$30.00Add to cartWords of wisdom by Abraham Ali. These spoken words are a short introduction into the life and journey of Ali. A young Black man striving to be free and define his identity in this negativity. This is my therapy. My art for life contribution to the human family are the words that empower me to see my true destiny. Hopefully, they will help to guide you through the darkness that the mind must navigate through to ultimately find and define you.
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Through The Storm
$16.99Add to cartA collection of honest, conversational poems,Through the Storm explores the place where faith and fear meet. It will inspire you to find your voice and dream bigger than you ever thought possible.
Through this collection of authentic, conversational poetry, poet Michael Agnew vulnerably shares his story through the highs and lows of life, touching on themes such as insecurity and identity, weakness and wounding, healing and hope. With a refreshing candor, Agnew explores the place where faith and fear meet and invites you to honestly share your story with God and your uniqueness with the world.
With the message that every voice matters and that life’s storms can ultimately become our biggest strength, Through the Storm will inspire you to step out into the unknown, face your fears, and dream bigger than you ever thought possible.
“I believe that poetry can change the world, and I believe that together we can change the world. Because whenever we take the emotions and the feelings that are inside of us and express them by creating poetry, it allows others who have experienced similar emotional journeys to connect with these experiences in powerful ways.” – Michael Agnew
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Language Of The Birds
$21.00Add to cartAccording to legend, the language of the birds was a mystical language God used to talk with Adam and Eve when he walked with them in the garden of Eden. Amy Nemecek listens for this divine dialect as she communes with God on her walks along country roads and creek banks, through forests and hayfields. She observes the world around her with expectation, knowing that God still speaks to us as he is at work making all things new. If we have ears to hear, we can catch snippets of his grace in the watercolor silhouette of a bird, the thrum of a tractor engine, the tang of a grapefruit, the curvature of an ampersand. Amy doesn’t want to miss any of it, so she remains attentive to the smooth grit of beach sand, the tendrils of a nebula, and the steady gaze of a fossil. She delights in the details, and you will too.
In this collection of lyric and narrative poems, you are invited to walk with her as she reflects on larger themes of beauty, loss, motherhood, family, and vocation. She contemplates the sacredness of ordinary moments that we usually don’t recognize except in hindsight. Twining through every line is an aching hopefulness that ties together her love of words, her devotion to scripture, and her deep gratitude for each of life’s joys and griefs.
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Holy Land : Poems
$21.00Add to cart“Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” -Exodus 3:5″The Holy Land is everywhere.” -Black Elk
The two epigraphs that preface Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s Holy Land introduce the reader to the central theme that permeates her poems: that holy places deserve to be regarded with reverence and that all places are holy places. In her afterward, the poet traces these foundational concepts to her Catholic childhood wherein religious instruction consisted largely of memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. “One of questions the Catechism poses is ‘Where is God?’ The answer is ‘God is everywhere.’ We believed this to be true. God was in church, but God was also in our house (a crucifix in every room), in the backyard, in our Buick (rosary beads swinging from the rearview mirror), at our birthday parties in the basement, and in our own bodies. And though those places may not sound very holy, they were. Because God was there. Is there.”
In addition to affirming this foundational belief, these poems extend the terrain, moving beyond the geographical and the physical to the temporal, the carnal, the intellectual, and the spiritual realms. They assert that our days are blessed, our bodies are blessed, our minds and souls are all blessed and sacred ground. The poet explores a broad spectrum of physical locations, beginning with poems set in the Holy Land and moving on to places closer to home, ranging from the west of Ireland to rural Minnesota, from New York City to the Texas border. She also probes the temporal spaces we occupy, experiences of death and birth, love and loss, desire and desolation that mark our human passage.
The English word holy is related to the Germanic word heilig, a word that means blessed and also carries within it the idea of wholeness. Holy Land attempts to honor both the holiness and the wholeness of our world-from Gotham to Golgotha, the Bronx River to the Sea of Galilee-and to honor the holiness and wholeness of our blessed and broken humanity.
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Century Of Poetry
$33.99Add to cartAll good poetry has the power to transport and transform us, to inspire and challenge us, to comfort and heal us, and to hold up a mirror to the world around us.
In A Century of Poetry, Rowan Williams invites you to reflect with him on 100 poems from the past 100 years poems with an originality and depth that can impel you to search your heart, and to explore your own experience and emotions at a deeper level.
Featuring the work of both famous and lesser-known poets, from different faiths, languages and cultures, A Century of Poetry gives you a fresh perspective on works you may be familiar with, as well as introducing you to poems you’ll be pleased to discover for the first time or perhaps discover again.
These meditations, by a writer who is both a poet and a theologian, will open new doors into the experience of reading and absorbing great poetry, highlighting the ways in which their language and imagery can touch unfamiliar places in the heart and enliven the lifelong adventure of spiritual growth and exploration.
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Christian Poetry In America Since 1940
$25.00Add to cartShowcasing thirty-five American poets born in or after 1940, this anthology confirms that one of the most vibrant developments in contemporary verse has been a renewed engagement with the Christian faith. Across a full spectrum of Christian belief, including the struggle to believe at all, these poets bring the power of their art to bear on serious questions: how to understand the goodness of God in a fallen and tragic world, how to reconcile universal truths with the particularities of human experience, how to render familiar events of salvation history in new language that generates its own epiphanies. As Christian engagement assumes a multiplicity of modes and voices, so does contemporary poetry in America. This volume, then, selective yet representative, features the work of early-, mid-, and late-career poets, formalists, free-verse poets, and experimenters in prosody. This anthology bears witness to the poetic mind as it seeks that which is above.
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From Shade To Shine
$20.00Add to cartThis collection of poems begins in the growing darkness of November, stretches through Advent and the seasons leading to Easter and to Pentecost, and ends in the budding light of the Scottish Orkney Islands, where the canonical hours measure time over centuries and where God broods over an austere and beautiful landscape. The measurement of time passing and returning, year after year, in the rhythms of the seasons and of the liturgical year, create the pace and the song. But in the biblical voices of Magdalene, Mary, Abel, and Eve, and in the grim historical and political realities of war and suffering, one also hears lament and finds the poet’s clear-eyed gaze straight into life’s challenges. Memory is at work here, too, in personal reminiscences and in theological reflection. As one philosopher has said, “All truth is God’s truth.”
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Angels Everywhere : Poems
$19.00Add to cart“The word ‘angel’ means ‘messenger’ and the title poem of this book, ‘Angels Everywhere, ‘ presents the idea that what I often glimpse is a flicker of glancing light, as if a heavenly being is darting in and out of my viewing, allowing me entry into a realm beyond my physical, experiential world–brief revelatory messages from somewhere beyond. I’m hoping that as you read these poems, (more than once, aloud if possible) something like Wordsworth’s ‘intimations of immortality’ will enliven your own perceptions of the world as you experience it. Maybe your own fleet of angels will show up!” –Luci Shaw, from the Introduction
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Begin With A Question
$20.00Add to cartBegin with a Question explores how the life of faith is a continuous voyage, launched anew each bright day of the spirit or dark night of the soul. This is a book of contemplation and motion, a journey–often in stops and starts–toward the Divine, a pilgrimage paved with prayer, praise, pause, penitence, and (of course) questions. Urgent and universal, joyful or joyless, tinged with doubt or rinsed with hope, here are honest queries that probe, lift, and lead to discovery. Begin with a Question keeps us moving, seeking, reaching, lifting us out of ourselves to something beyond. Using a variety of fixed forms and free verse, the poet examines our relationship to the one who asks, “Who do you say that I am?” A book for seekers, doubters, and believers alike, these poems bring us face to face with anguish, anger, awe, and adoration. They give us permission not to demand answers, but to follow the questions that lead to the Alpha and Omega, to the I AM that keeps us spiraling along this twisting path toward God.
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Raising The Sparks
$19.00Add to cartRaising the Sparks, Jennifer Wallace’s sixth poetry collection, is inspired by the alignment of Christian and Judaic traditions. The idea of raising the sparks, tikkun olam, comes from 16th century mystical Judaism–the belief that, if people worked to “gather or raise the sparks” from the sacred vessels that shattered at the moment of creation, a repair of the world from its initial splitting would be complete. It is the duty of each one of us to raise the sparks from wherever they are imprisoned and to elevate them to holiness. Also informing this work is the Jesuit idea of finding God in all things and conversing (without clerical intervention) directly with Jesus. The poems in this collection engage with these theological traditions by witnessing the human joys and challenges of attending to their mandates.
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God Speaks Through Wombs
$16.99Add to cartbirthing prophetic utterances. . . . Enough of this unbelieving religion that masquerades as faith. Divine favor is placed on what we have disgraced.
In God Speaks Through Wombs, Drew Jackson explores the first eight chapters of Luke’s Gospel in a new poetic register. These are declarative poems, faithfully proclaiming the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the “fresh words / that speak of / things impossible.” From the Magnificat (“That girl can sing! . . . She has a voice / That can shatter shackles”) to the baptism of Christ (“I stepped in / Committing insurrection”), this collection helps us hear the hum of deliverance–against all hope–that’s been in the gospel all along.
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Poems Of John Donne
$13.95Add to cartJohn Donne was one of the great “metaphysical poets” in Elizabethan England. His work helped establish the English tradition of poetry, and influenced everyone afterwards from Alexander Pope to T.S. Eliot. Donne lived a tumultuous life before settling down and becoming the dean of St. Paul’s cathedral. He wrote everything from love sonnets to satires and elegies, but his greatest poems are undoubtedly the holy sonnets.
In this new edition of the complete 1633 collection of Donne’s poems, we see the work of a mature Christian poet and pastor writing about love, suffering, and our need for God.
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.” ~Holy Sonnet -
Holy Spirit Inspired Poetry
$19.95Add to cartThis book contains much of the poetry written to accompany the weekly sermons at Willow River Baptist Church of Houston under Pastor Al Cabrera. It contains poems written over several years. Pastor Cabrera gave me the sermon scriptures each week to write a related poem to print in the bulletin. Many poems came to me in the middle of the night, and I would quickly rise to put them on paper. Only the Holy Spirit could allow me the words to write.
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There Is A Future
$19.00Add to cartLearning 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.
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Litany Of Flights
$21.00Add to cartWinner 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 slopedown. Second, the effortless type, wind-splayed, motionless pinions
in thermal recline, as the Psalmist says, blessings breeze his love evenin 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 bydivine 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 fromNineveh. 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 theShulamite bride, to regions beyond aeronautical wisdom, transported in joy.
See, he says, the painful paring of your hollow bones has made you light. -
Therese : Poems
$21.00Add to cartIn this collection, poet Sarah Law presents lucid, lyrical reflections on the much-loved saint, Therese of Lisieux (1873-97), whose life and writing has been an inspiration to so many people. For Sarah Law, there is something about Therese that catches at the heart, and her poems flow from that sense of friendship and tenderness with her subject. Many of the poems meditate on events, large and small, in Therese’s brief but spiritually significant life. The first section explores her childhood, and the second, her nine precious years as a Carmelite nun; years of both sweetness and suffering. Several poems are inspired by well-known photographs of Therese, some of which are included in this volume. A final section considers Therese’s legacy, as her ‘little way’ of confidence and love became known throughout the world. Each poem may be read as an individual reflection, and as part of the larger biographical sequence.
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Generosity : Poems
$20.00Add to cartRejoice, readers, as you receive the generosity of Luci Shaw’s 76 new grace-infused parable poems. Autobiography once more merges with theology as these poems illuminate in splendored natural detail how the seasons of creation parallel and explain the seasons of her life as a poet. Again and again, these poems shower us with glorious epiphanies from the natural world as it reflects God’s generosity at work such as “spring’s impossible news of green.” These poems confirm that in poetry as in faith “ripeness is all.” Like Wordsworth, Luci is celebrated for being a highly gifted landscape poet whose works are rich in imagery from the physical world-meadows filled with seeds, flowers, and also poems which are like “shoots” in Luci’s writing life. Animals, too, great and small (beetles, cricket, and voles to bears and whales) play a major role in Luci’s poetics of creation; God is likened to a great bear who leaves paw tracks for us to follow. In their deep faith and vibrant colors and designs, the poems in Generosity might be considered Luci’s Book of Kells. We need to be like Luci’s father who carried her poems in his briefcase to show his friends.
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Prayerful Poet : Found Poems In Hymns Of The Past
$14.99Add to cartBeverly Stock is a feature writer turned poet from St. Louis, Missouri. Noted for her whimsical, thoughtful style, Beverly is passionate about creating work that explores the joys, challenges, and surprises of everyday life. The Prayerful Poet is her first collection of verse. Brimming with joy, wonder, and tenderness, this stirring volume takes inspiration from traditional Christian hymns and classic spiritual works.
Each poem combines Beverly’s poetic adaptations with the time-honored hymnal lyrics and finds fresh meaning in traditional songs of praise. A mixture of grand voices and elegiac laments, The Prayerful Poet engages readers with its hopeful perspective, and is a perfect read for anyone who finds beauty in the divine.
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Exploring This Terrain
$21.00Add to cartWhat is the terrain that Margaret Ingraham explores in Exploring This Terrain? It ranges from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Pluto. The path crosses the trails of memory and illness, the natural world and disintegration, and various parts unseen. Yet it stays, as Margaret says near the end of the book, in the ‘secret places of my brokenness.’ It is the beautiful landscape of wonder, the uneven country of love, the difficult ground of faith.
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Andalusian Hours : Poems From The Porch Of Flannery O’Connor
$20.00Add to cartAndalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo O’Donnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her family’s farm named “Andalusia.” Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from O’Connor’s essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs Flannery’s thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into O’Connor’s private world. Together the poems tell the story of a brilliant young woman who enjoyed a bright and promising childhood, was struck with lupus just as her writing career hit its stride, and was forced to return home and live out her days in exile, far from the literary world she loved. By turns tragic and comic, the poems in Andalusian Hours explore Flannery’s loves and losses, her complex relationship with her mother, her battle with her illness and disability, and her passion for her writing. The poems mark time in keeping with the liturgical hours O’Connor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.
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Madonna Complex
$14.00Add to cartWhat does it mean to say yes?–to God, to the Spirit, to art, to love, to motherhood, to the dazzling & tangible world? Mary’s response to the angel, saying “Let it be to me as you have said,” is an essential moment in the life of a disciple, a woman, and an artist. In Madonna, Complex, Mary’s “yes” is a moment of opening, of allowing her very body to become a co-creator with God and a conduit for the coming of grace into the world. However, womanhood in all its fullness–sexuality, marriage, infertility, childbirth, nursing–inevitably complicates traditional Christian imagery of Mary. Madonna, Complex chronicles a feminine faith journey alongside saints like Joan of Arc and Saint Kateri, images of motherhood in visual art, through holy days of the Christian calendar–Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, All Saints Day–and sites of pilgrimage, cathedrals, wilderness, and other places holiness can be found. These poems explore the complexities of the messages we receive about what it means to say yes to God, or to something larger than ourselves that demands our attention and energy, whether it’s bearing a child or participating in a political protest.
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Probing Eyes : Poems Of A Lifetime, 1959-2019
$16.99Add to cartProbing Eyes is a collection of 156 poems written over a period of 60 years by a Christian professor of English literature. The first and largest section is called “Scriptural Extensions,” and it seeks to throw fresh light on various Scriptural situations by either projecting the personality of a character though a dramatic monologue or offering a fresh slant on the events depicted. These poems proceed from asking the question, “I wonder what this biblical character was thinking in the midst of these events.” The second section, “Interactions,” presents some of the author’s experiences in interfacing with others, from family and friends to people only casually known. The third section, “Perspectives on Time, consists of poems written mostly as New Year’s meditations, dealing with how we as Christians are affected by the passage of time; while the inexorable flow of time reminds of our finiteness and mortality, it also challenges us to understand how God, Who is timeless, is master of our limitations. The final section, “Personal and Meditative,” is a miscellanea of personal and occasional ruminations, some serious and others playful. The book has four indexes to facilitate finding a poem by title, chronological placement, Scriptural reference, or topic. The author hopes that these poems will thus lend themselves to use for private Bible study and sermon or worship application. The most fruitful reading of the poems, especially of those for which a Scriptural reference is given, will come from a careful look at the relevant biblical texts.
This book is not presented as the work of a main-stream poet, for Prof. Higgs has pursued his poetry writing as an avocation, not a profession. He has opted for clarity over artistic sophistication, which may not commend him to contemporary critics and practitioners of poetic composition. At the same time, the author aspires to go beyond the kind of religious versification whose primary purpose is to convey a moral lesson through rhyming lines. That is not an ignoble objective, but it does not embrace a full participation in the linguistic complexity that characterizes serious poetry. Dr. Higgs seeks in his poems to combine the beauty of art with the beauty of Truth, and thereby to stimulate fresh attention to who God is and how He works with the people of His creation.
The style of Probing Eyes is mainly free verse, but with regular use of internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. The reader may see reflected i
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Spirits In Bondage
$25.99Add to cartA rare glimpse of a young C. S. Lewis.
Spirits in Bondage reveals the earliest published thoughts of C. S. Lewis. However, we find an unfamiliar Lewis–not the mature Christian but the young atheist cynic, who fought in the harrowing Great War. In these poems Lewis dreads the dangerous world that keeps us from living meaningful lives.
Introduced by Karen Swallow Prior, this beautiful print edition of Spirits in Bondage will nuance our understanding of C. S. Lewis.
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My Sour Sweet Days
$14.99Add to cartGeorge Herbert is one of the great 17th century poet-priests. His poems embrace every shade of the spiritual life, from love and closeness, to anger and despair, to reconciliation and hope. And his work is always rich with audacious playfulness: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, as if he’s having an argument with a faithful friend he knows is not going to leave. In much of theology and spirituality, God is a critical spectator to human lives, but for Herbert, his sense of relationship with God is primarily of a friendship that can never be broken. These are some of the themes Mark Oakley explores in this outstanding book. He offers a poem for every day in Lent, with a two-page commentary on each of the forty included.
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All Along You Were Blooming
$18.99Add to cartA celebration of hope. An encounter with grace. A restoration of the heart. A healing of wounds. An anthem of freedom. All Along You Were Blooming is the ultimate love letter from the pen of popular Instagram poet Morgan Harper Nichols to your mind, to your heart, to your soul, and to your body.
Morgan Harper Nichols delivers a striking collection of illustrated poetry and prose, inviting you to “stumble into the sunlight” and delight in the wild and boundless grace you’ve been given. There is a purpose in every season, and no matter how you want to race through this day or run away from this place, rest assured that you are invited to live fully–right here, right now. Light will always find you, and even when the sun sets and you sit awaiting the dawn, know you are still blooming in the way you were meant to. And in each small moment, whether in the light or the dark, you can make room for becoming, for breathing, for stumbling, and for simply being–for there is Grace, today and every day.
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Tender Whispers Of Love Poetry
$30.95Add to cart“Poetry? Who reads poetry anymore?”
Actually, poetry is more a part of our lives than we at first might think. The lyrics of songs we love that speak to us in a big way are composed of poetry. The Psalms-from which we can glean so much spiritual support-and the well-known hymns we sing are all poetry.
Ellen invites you on a journey. Together, you can explore the glorious highs and the bewildering lows that life can bring in these powerfully rich poems that express freedom, joy, and hope in Jesus as well as deep grief, loneliness, and other more difficult topics.
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Tender Whispers Of Love Poetry
$13.95Add to cart“Poetry? Who reads poetry anymore?”
Actually, poetry is more a part of our lives than we at first might think. The lyrics of songs we love that speak to us in a big way are composed of poetry. The Psalms-from which we can glean so much spiritual support-and the well-known hymns we sing are all poetry.
Ellen invites you on a journey. Together, you can explore the glorious highs and the bewildering lows that life can bring in these powerfully rich poems that express freedom, joy, and hope in Jesus as well as deep grief, loneliness, and other more difficult topics.
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This Far : Poems
$21.00Add to cartThis collection offers a rich harvest taken from one season in the poet’s creative life. Like movements in a musical composition, these poems share leitmotifs ? grief and the desire to honor those “saints” who have passed on; the sacramental power of nature; and, how works of art illuminate and console as they do. They point to the tension between the practice of monastic silence and the urge to bear witness, interrogating faith in the light of crises facing the earth and our human community. At the same time, the poet celebrates encounters that offer blessings of hope, inviting us to join her in a pilgrimage that leads us, with her, “this far,” and gestures to what lies beyond.
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Wing Over Wing
$21.00Add to cartWing Over Wing clears a path in the midst of everyday life to reveal the holy-whether catching fireflies at night, waiting at a bus stop, or experiencing the death of a loved one. This collection of beautiful poems lives at the intersection of the sacred and the ordinary, from the swirling flight of birds to conversations with the homeless. Wing Over Wing brims with compassion. The reader will find comfort and sustenance, as well as surprise and laughter, in these pages.
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Mystery Of It All
$25.00Add to cartPaul Mariani has spent the past fifty years trying to write a poetry which celebrates the vibrant sacramentality of life in the twilight of Modernity. Many of those years he spent writing the lives of Williams, Berryman, Lowell, Hart Crane, Stevens, and Hopkins, the Jesuit responsible for Mariani’s becoming a poet in the first place. “It is difficult,” Williams wrote, “to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.” Still, he pleaded to be heard, which is what Mariani asks of us now, as he celebrates a poetry which speaks even more directly of what the good news is.
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Anaphora : New Poems
$20.00Add to cartAnaphora-the repetition of a word or phrase-is a strategy that assists coherence, and draws attention to the repeated terms. In Eucharistic settings, it also indicates the specific liturgical moment when the bread and wine are consecrated, becoming what we in the Eastern Church are pleased to name the Holy Mysteries. Certain poems in this collection employ overt anaphora; many do not. Still, they invite a sense of words as doing more than naming, more than serving as arrows pointing to prior substance; intermittently, these words may acquire due substance of their own, partaking of more than is apparent, but is nonetheless so, and is present.
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Trust God : Poetry To Encourage, Inspire, Enlighten, And Guide
$14.99Add to cartTrust God is a book of poetry written for those who are discouraged, wounded, cursed, oppressed, lonely, doubtful, fear-hearted, sick, abused, despised, rejected, and neglected. Be encouraged, inspired, enlightened and guided to trust God in every area of your life. There are times in our lives when we go through trials and tribulations and there seems to be no solution.?
When you are burdened, beat down, sick, afflicted, hated, deceived, betrayed, scorned, tempted by the enemy, and doubtful that you can even trust God, trust Him even then, because He is able to come to your aid.?
Trust in the Lord with all your?heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your heart (Proverbs 3:5-6). ???
Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. (Psalms 37:3)
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Waltzing With God
$11.95Add to cartIn a single moment,
when we feel His presence
drawing us to His grace,
all is possible-forgiveness, love,
being the whole.He saw in each of us
our essence,who we would become
as He spoke our names;
the thumbprint of God
whispered inside each soul.Waltzing with GOD is a collection of inspiring, spirit-filled poetry from a Christian woman who takes a heartwarming approach in writing about her relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is an uplifting read for anyone who wants to curl up with a book in search of peace and comfort with God Himself nearby. Hammond’s poignant words reflect upon Christ Jesus’ Love and Grace. These very personal poems pour onto each page, lifting us ever closer to Him as life taps upon our patience. Her book is a treasured waltz moving in concert with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Piloted by His word, the Bible guides our dance and footsteps leading us ever closer to God’s heart.
Each original poem is enhanced with photos taken in historical Jerusalem and surrounding communities, in actual biblical settings. Pictures include: Gethsemane Garden at the foot of Mount Olives, Church of the Beatitudes and the Jordan River where Hammond and her husband were baptized. Captivating images of nature located in the Pacific Northwest, Eastern Washington and Central Oregon are also included.
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Waltzing With God
$28.95Add to cartIn a single moment,
when we feel His presence
drawing us to His grace,
all is possible-forgiveness, love,
being the whole.He saw in each of us
our essence,who we would become
as He spoke our names;
the thumbprint of God
whispered inside each soul.Waltzing with GOD is a collection of inspiring, spirit-filled poetry from a Christian woman who takes a heartwarming approach in writing about her relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is an uplifting read for anyone who wants to curl up with a book in search of peace and comfort with God Himself nearby. Hammond’s poignant words reflect upon Christ Jesus’ Love and Grace. These very personal poems pour onto each page, lifting us ever closer to Him as life taps upon our patience. Her book is a treasured waltz moving in concert with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Piloted by His word, the Bible guides our dance and footsteps leading us ever closer to God’s heart.
Each original poem is enhanced with photos taken in historical Jerusalem and surrounding communities, in actual biblical settings. Pictures include: Gethsemane Garden at the foot of Mount Olives, Church of the Beatitudes and the Jordan River where Hammond and her husband were baptized. Captivating images of nature located in the Pacific Northwest, Eastern Washington and Central Oregon are also included.
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Pilgrim You Find The Path By Walking
$21.00Add to cartSonnets are familiar to us, but not relevant. What do they have to do with our fast-paced, tech-driven, ever-shrinking contemporary world? But what if the sonnet–invented 700 years ago–could come back like a cat with nine lives? A sonnet in the twenty-first century might serve as a sacramental form, calling us from our work-mad lives to quietness and reflection.
In Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking, Jeanne Murray Walker invites the reader to join her on a journey told in 58 colloquial sonnets, beginning in the slangy streets of New York and ending in the holiness of silence and praise. Stops on the journey include reflections on death and grief, but also praise for a migrating butterfly, a knock on the door, the astonishing ocean. This book is designed to be used as a devotional and read slowly; to be both a book of poetry and a spiritual companion.
