Publisher's Synopsis
The Saint Mary's Book of Christian Verse brings together the work of poets from across the English-speaking world to celebrate the sacred art of poetry in all of its pied beauty.
Chosen by the acclaimed Newman scholar Edward Short, the collection captures not only the range but the richness of Christian verse. The last comparable anthology of Christian poetry to appear was Donald Davie's Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1981): a proper successor, one more reflective of the true scope and variety of Christian poetry, has been long overdue.
The Saint Mary's Book of Christian Verse supplies that need with a dazzling compilation encompassing over eight centuries of Christian verse by poets extending from Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, George Herbert, John Donne, John Milton and Henry Vaughan to William Cowper, Isaac Watts, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot and Dana Gioia. In between, readers will find poems about faith, hope, love, loss, praise, rejoicing, mortality and immortality from such beloved poets as St. Robert Southwell, Thomas Traherne, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Wallace Stevens, Charles Causley, Elizabeth Jennings, James McAuley, and Richard Wilbur.
A perfect anthology for schools, colleges and the general reader, The Saint Mary's Book of Christian Versewill serve as a welcome reaffirmation for readers around the world of how vital Christian verse has been and remains to our deeply humanizing, deeply civilizing Christian inheritance.
Edward Short is the author of several studies of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, as well as What the Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews, He lives in New York with his wife and two young children.
"This mesmerizingly beautiful anthology of Christian poetry reminds us on every page of the Catholic tradition's distinctive commitment to love, grace, redemption, and thanksgiving. Mr. Short's careful editorial work shines throughout: poets devout and sceptical alike are put into conversation with each other, allowing the reader to move between Cædmon and Milton, Blake and Shelley, Rossetti and Hopkins, Larkin and Jennings. The Catholic imagination is voiced so sonorously here that all will welcome the delights within. For all those who prize poetry, Mr. Short's anthology sounds a restorative music of prayers, devotions, laments, and praise in which the most resonant note is a love of God and so love of all things. A phenomenal introduction to the majesty of Christian verse in English."
