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“I think that Phyllis was a poet first and foremost, before anything else. Here she has attentively gathered all of the poems she wished to preserve from the last half century. A handful of them were written in the last few years. This book should surprise a lot of people. Its honesty leaves me breathless.”
—Jon M. Sweeney, editor of Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings (Orbis), and author of the biography, Phyllis Tickle(forthcoming)
“Fierce-minded, Phyllis Tickle’s poems place us in the most central of human concerns, namely the lifelong search for rest, fellowship, peace, and grace. Her best poems—”The Cranes,” for instance—teach us that we, too, are only “migratory,” moving from one place to another and that there has always been a voice “like manna…/Come from another land/To say,/’This way! This way!'” Her poems, like her whole life, heeded that voice, inviting us all to follow. “
—Jeff Hardin, author of Notes for a Praise Book and Restoring the Narrative
“Phyllis Tickle uses words as Vermeer used paint; both bring a unique light to their work. The page became a canvas, and master writer Phyllis Tickle’s pen brushed her life, family, and friends, then framed them in a sense of place. Hungry Spring and Ordinary Song reaches from the bottom of her soul to the top of her heart and mind. Phyllis never holds anything back. This book is a masterpiece that will hang in our memory galleries forever.”
—Margaret Britton Vaughn, Poet Laureate of Tennessee
Phyllis Tickle (1934-2015) was a writer, poet, book publisher, and journalist. She was the founding religion editor at Publishers Weekly and a leading voice in the Emerging Christianity movement. She was also the author of nearly forty books including The Divine Hours series and The Great Emergence. The mother of seven children, for 38 years she lived with her husband, Sam, on The Farm in Lucy, TN.
