To Heaven's Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation
Ebook
From its very first days, the church has been lifting up its songs and poems from the earth to the heavens, whether in praise, thanksgiving, or lament. Join poets from across Syria, Europe, Armenia, Ethiopia, China, and the Philippines in raising their voices. Learn about these great Christian singers from around the world, many of whom are hardly known at all among English readers, yet who are often considered the greatest poets in their own languages. Explore the many styles and genres which Christians have used to express their faith in song, whether hymn, psalm, dream vision, epic, drama, lyric, or didactic poem. Journey through the lives of biblical characters, through abstract theological and philosophical arguments, through moments of intense personal grief and joy, through the lives of saints and terrible sinners, sometimes even through heaven and hell themselves.
“To risk hyperbole, there has never been a book like To Heaven’s Rim before. Horniachek’s anthology shows us how continuous are the Christian theological and spiritual traditions with the poetic one, and that the most profound beauty will be found in ancient texts of which few contemporary Christians will have heard before.”
—James Matthew Wilson, author of The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking
“In this delicious anthology, as at some extratemporal wedding feast, a millennium and a half of the world’s greatest Christian poets mingle with immortal English-language poets—Henry Vaughn, Longfellow, and Hopkins—and with contemporary masters such as Willis Barnstone, Christopher Childers, Rhina Esplaillat, Edith Grossman, Seamus Heaney, A. E. Stallings, George Szirtes, and Richard Wilbur. Laetare! If you hunger for the beauty of poetry and the wisdom of theology, taste and see.”
—Ryan Wilson, editor-in chief, Literary Matters
“In his learned anthology of Christian poetry, Burl Horniachek takes us from the early fourth century to the end of the eighteenth, from Syria and Ethiopia to China and Mexico, embracing an exhilarating variety of poetic modes while insisting upon the highest standards of the translator’s art. What we witness throughout the book is not the spread of a doctrine, but the emergence of individual voices and visions, and, in some cases, of entire national literary traditions, enkindled by devotion.”
—Boris Dralyuk, co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
“‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations,’ Christ exhorts his disciples. This impressive anthology affirms what we should already know: that like the word of God itself, the Christian poetic tradition speaks to, and from, all the world, in all its tongues. Collecting poems from the early church forward, drawing on the best poets and translators working today, Burl Horniachek has given readers in English that tradition’s diverse beauty and vibrancy.”
—Sally Thomas, editor of Christian Poetry in America Since 1940
- Title: To Heaven's Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation
- Author: Burl Horniachek
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666716849, 9781666716832, 1666716839, 9781666716825, 1666716820, 1666716847
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666716849
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-05T21:41:10Z
Burl Horniachek is a Canadian poet and translator. He lives in Selkirk, Manitoba, with his wife and two children.