Banners of Longing: New and Selected Religious Poems
Ebook
Banners of Longing is a collection of sixty-four reflective and religious poems divided into four categories: Seasons, Sinners, Personae, and Meditations. These poems will move, console, inspire, and enlighten the reader prepared to appreciate religious and reflective verse.
The poems in this collection examine everyday experiences, events, and perceptions in the light of faith. They also look--sometimes with wry humor--at familiar biblical characters in a twenty-first-century light. The collection as a whole presents a spirituality of presence, gratitude, and graceful living in the world.
Including selected poems from the author's earlier collection, Anno Domini, Banners of Longing acknowledges its many debts to such religious poets as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov, and Dana Gioia. The spiritual influence of contemporary theologian Elizabeth Johnson and the late Cistercian monk and spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, are also unmistakable. Many of these poems first appeared in such distinguished journals as Spiritus, Parabola, and the famed Jesuit journal, Review for Religious.
“In Banners of Longing, Ed Block finds spiritual abundance in spare and yet beautiful imagery: Kentucky hardwoods, a hummingbird, a ‘softly spoken’ snowfall. Pulling threads from Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, and Mary Oliver, these restorative poems honor the sacredness of everyday life, even as they mark how ‘whoever God is’ keeps ‘slipping away from our naming.’”
—Angela Sorby, professor of English and creative writing, Marquette University
- Title: Banners of Longing: New and Selected Religious Poems
- Authors: Ed Block, Dana Greene
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666779165, 9781666779158, 1666779156, 9781666779141, 1666779148, 1666779164
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666779165
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-08-02T22:31:02Z
Ed Block is emeritus professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI. Anno Domini, a collection of reflective verse, appeared in 2016; a second poetry collection, Seasons of Change, in 2017. Shell Dreams appeared in 2021; Moments Strange in 2022.
His interviews, essays, and reviews on literary topics, as well as the spirituality of everyday life, have appeared in America, Image, Commonweal, Logos, U.S. Catholic, and other journals. Lamps of the Tradition, a collection of short essays on the Catholic tradition, came out in 2020.