Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life: Poems
Ebook
Overview
What does prayer look like in contemporary America? With a welcoming tone and plainspoken diction, the forty poems in Hansen’s collection explore that question. Including elements of autobiography, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life investigates Christianity in the present, depicting a faith in God that is continuously in flux. Readers journey through the seasons of the church year as Hansen recounts doubts, conversions, frustrations, and confessions. Ultimately, these poems are concerned as much with words as they are with the Word.
“Your Twenty-first Century Prayer Life should be
required reading for all churchgoers, for all people who have
struggled to pray, practice Lenten disciplines, or survive
infuriating sermons. ‘Form and content matter,’ Hansen writes, ‘but
not/as much as the posture of the heart.’ The quiet, but no less
pointedly honest, voice in these poems plumbs the marrow of doubt
to reveal the ‘beautiful ache of belief’ that issues from a closely
examined spiritual life.”
—Tania Runyan, Author of Second Sky
“In his trustworthy sincerity, his rich and considerate
earnestness, Nathaniel Hansen reminds me again and again of none
other than George Herbert. Both poets share a hidden-in-plain-sight
artistry that kindles in me a new devotion. Here is a book that
above all is about ‘the posture of the heart,’ a heart that
reverberates ‘the beautiful ache of belief,’ even as ‘your elbows
smart, bone against old wood.’”
—Paul J. Willis, Author of Getting to Gardisky Lake
“From the rough and tumble of daily work and children, Nathaniel
Hansen carves out time to pray, as well as quiet moments to reflect
on what he calls his prayer life. It is a journey fraught with
interruptions, redirections, and finally, sometimes, connections
with God. It’s a fine companion for anyone who is serious about
praying.”
—Jeanne Murray Walker, Author of Helping the Morning: New and
Selected Poetry
“Nathaniel Hansen’s prayer life is all of our prayer lives elevated
to art: cross-pressured, halting, urgent. These poems achieve
intimacy with the transcendent by never taking it for granted. They
approach God through a poetics of waiting, of openness, of not
not-yet-but-soon. These poems are firmly grounded in the physical
world even while reaching toward sacred time. Hansen is the
faithful but honest Christian poet we need in this secular
age.”
—Benjamin Myers, Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature, Oklahoma
Baptist University
Product Details
- Title : Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life: Poems
- Author: Hansen, Nathaniel Lee
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Publication Date: 2018
- ISBN: 9781532641152
Nathaniel Lee Hansen is Associate Professor of English at the
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor where he edits The
Windhover and directs The Windhover Writers’ Festival.
His chapbook, Four Seasons West of the 95th
Meridian, was published by Spoon River Poetry Press (2014).
His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in St. Katherine
Review, Split Lip Magazine, Driftwood Press, Whitefish
Review, The Cresset, Midwestern Gothic,
Bluestem, The Evansville Review, and South Dakota
Review, among others.