"Consider this a short course for the soul. Or, perhaps, the syllabus to last a lifetime. . . Gathered here we find selected and new poems from a contemplative monk or three, an Episcopal priest, a rabbi, a protege of Thomas Merton, an Iranian-German poet, a theologian, a flock of English professors, and poets from Ireland, Poland, West Virginia and Tennessee. Tucked amid the poets' roster, we find Rainer Maria Rilke, considered one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, in new and previous translations by Burrows. . . You'll wear out the pages and the binding before you're ever ready to put down this book."
— Barbara Mahany, Chicago Tribune
"Paraclete is a house firmly rooted in presenting and curating religious poetry as that part of the verbal experience that, being couched more deeply in the aesthetic than the didactic, has deep resonance and potent significance for the shaping of the surrounding culture itself and, as well, for the integration of individual experience into the communal, surrounding, historical, and evolving one. . .It means the on-going giving away and sharing of God with humility through mystery."
—Phyllis Tickle (1934-2015)
The anthology spans the first ten years of the poetry series at Paraclete Press. Included are poems by Phyllis Tickle, Scott Cairns, Paul Mariani, Anna Kamienska, Fr. John-Julian, SAID, Bonnie Thurston, Greg Miller, William Woolfitt, Rami Shapiro, Thomas Lynch, Paul Quenon, and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Mark S. Burrows is a professor or religion and literature, a scholar of medieval Christianity, and a poet. He has taught in several graduate theological schools in the United States and Germany, and is widely recognized for his work in spirituality, theology, and the arts. Burrows has translated contemporary German poet, including Ranier Maria Rilke, Iranian-German SAID, and German-Jewish poet Hilde Domin. Currently Series Editor for Paraclete Poetry and Mount Tabor Books, he also serves as poetry editor for the journals Spiritus and ARTS. He lives in Bochum, Germany, where he is on the faculty of the University of Applied Science.
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