New and Selected Religious Poems

by Ed Block · foreword by Dana Greene

• Arts & Literature

• Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
• Published: 2023

Publisher's Description

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.