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A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/WEST TRANSLATION AWARD The 100th Anniversary Edition of a global classic, containing beautiful translations along with the original German text. While visiting Russia in his twenties, Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, was moved by a spirituality he encountered there. Inspired, Rilke returned to Germany and put down on paper what he felt were spontaneously received prayers. Rilke's Book of Hours is the invigorating vision of spiritual practice for the secular world, and a work that seems remarkably prescient today, one hundred years after it was written. Rilke's Book of Hours shares with the reader a new kind of intimacy with God, or the divine—a reciprocal relationship between the divine and the ordinary in which God needs us as much as we need God. Rilke influenced generations of writers with his Letters to a Young Poet, and now Rilke's Book of Hours tells us that our role in the world is to love it and thereby love God into being. These fresh translations rendered by Joanna Macy, a mystic and spiritual teacher, and Anita Barrows, a skilled poet, capture Rilke's spirit as no one has done before.
Karen Kelsay's third full length book of lyric poetry, Of Omens That Flitter, is a moving collection of new and selected poems, both in form and in free verse, showcasing the musicality, care, and craftsmanship that have become the hallmark of the author's work. The shifting courses setting the tone in the opening sonnet reappear throughout, and provide the reader with deeply spiritual meditations on the theme of change-from youth to old age, from life to death, from summer to winter, from doubt to belief. The touching poems about her family, her travels, her faith, and her life in California and in England are infused with wisdom and humor, enhanced by an inspired and graceful combination of plainspoken language and striking sensual imagery. Her treatment of light and shadow, for example in "The Courtship Hour" and "Needlepoint in Blue," is particularly fine. In his search for a definition of pure poetry, scholar of philosophical theology and literature James Matthew Wilson states, "Poetry never appears so powerfully as a gift or revelation as when it finds words for the invisible life of the spirit." In Of Omens That Flitter Karen Kelsay has indeed found those words. Catherine Chandler ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬_______________________________________________ This is a book of poems by my publisher, so it behoves me to be, at least, polite. However, no need to worry. These are the sort of poems I like. They rhyme and they scan and they make sense. In other words they are unlike the sad general run of poetry these days. Well of course they are. Karen Kelsay started Kelsay Books in order to show the flag. I joined her, firstly because she accepted the book I sent her, but also because she is doing what needs to be done. There's plenty here about death (a poet's biggest gun). Death is the straight-faced man who stares far off. There are ghosts and more than a whiff of Tennyson, with poems called The Lady of Shalott and Mariana. Many of the poems don't rhyme, which doesn't suit my prejudices. Cats stalk through the book, which does. In fact the book is full of small, furtive animals and birds about their business, which could well be killing each other. Even the plants are on the move, an orchid and a hemlock intertwine forever. This is a very visual poet. She makes you see, and see in colour what's more. Lots of whites and blues and golds. Here and there a yellow, a green, a pink. Omens? What are they omens of? Disquiet and concealed violence. And underneath everything sadness. Sadness. John Witwhorth
Gigot's Feeding Hour deftly reimagines motherhood and devotion in the most tender of ways. This book will remind you how to care and be cared for. I'm so smitten with these love poems that dare promise a possible landscape where "...we can finally have everything, be everything we are called to be; Ourselves, in our own parade. Riding the elephant in the room, back and forth between home and away." -Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Oceanic and World of Wonders It might perhaps come as a surprise that a book immersed in the experience of motherhood-carrying, birthing, and raising a child-would also be so replete with hunger. But motherhood is all about the mutual desire of bodies and their ability to sate our endless thirst: the mother's body, the child's, and, in Jessica Gigot's new collection, the earth's, as well. From new lambs to tulip bulbs, from pelicans to pink moons, these poems are a meditation on the world's generous offerings. These tender poems, like bare-rooted, spare-spined saplings waiting to be planted, possess the delicate heft of haiku and a heavier weight, too-that of all the promising leaves those trees will someday bear. As Gigot says, "what we care for comes / back to us in hard / and mysterious ways." -Keetje Kuipers, author of All Its Charms and The Keys to the Jail Jessica Gigot tells us "the earth laughs in grass," as she composes a poetry of hard-earned joy sewn in the fertile soil of motherhood and farming. A shepherdess, Gigot speaks with authority about the sacrifices of care, the shared happiness and grief that braid like an old rope around the life she has chosen. There is magic in this collection as the poet "dreams herself into the bodies of these sheep" and tells us about the changing landscape, strands of past and present, the possible futures that her own pregnancies remind her still await. She proclaims, "I sing to / The one I am welcoming to this strange world," and her poems are an openhearted host for lucky readers like us. -Todd Davis, author of Native Species and Winterkill The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield said, "everything has a beginning and an end. Make peace with this and all will be well." In Jessica Gigot's Feeding Hour we encounter this basic truth again and again. What can one animal teach another about the harsh hours of labor, mothering, and letting go? How much are we part of a universal family of beings? As Gigot states our lives are "...separate / and also glaringly interwoven." As a farmer engaged with the life cycle of her sheep on a daily bases and her own experiences of motherhood Gigot turns a keen eye on the vacillations of birth, growth and departures evident in the instinctual nature of all animals. These poems reveal that "life spawns more life/ and what we care for comes/back to us in hard and mysterious ways." -Tina Schumann, author of Praising the Paradox