True, False, None of the Above
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2016
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Publisher's Description
True, False, None of the Above poetically explores what it means to write, read, and teach literature in a world that--at turns--rejects, embraces, or shrugs indifferently at the spiritual. This is a book on the intersection of words and belief, on how books mark and mirror our lives, and how sometimes the journey we experience on the page leads us to faith.
Endorsements (5)
“In True, False, None of the Above, Maddox offers us a brilliant, witty, and vulnerable garland of poems. Here is the voice of a teacher, a poet, a mother and wife, a woman of faith bearing witness to a deep and lasting Truth, summoning--among others--the likes of Dante, Hopkins, Dickinson, Eliot, and Frost, each calling out to the other, often at scintillant cross-purposes, all set choiring to this magisterial teacher's gentle bidding.”
“In the preface to her book True, False, None of the Above, Maddox describes the experience of literature--whether reading, teaching, or creating it--as a 'confrontation with reality.' And her poems indeed confront a range of uneasy truths, from adultery and natural disasters to tooth extraction and raising teens. Maddox builds on the shared imagination of writers and readers, richly and deftly, to deepen and challenge our spirits.”
“In some of these poems, Marjorie Maddox riffs on the poetry of other writers. Sometimes she sings like an angel, even about illness and death. She wields forms brilliantly, and she tells delicious stories about what goes on in her classroom. Everybody who relishes good poetry should buy this book. But if you're a teacher--or if you've ever sat in a classroom anywhere--True, False, None of the Above will make you laugh out loud.”
“In poem after poem Marjorie Maddox creates a rich environment in which the best teaching (and she is always a teacher) takes place in dialogue, even though conversations are not always neatly resolved. But she also consistently and convincingly points to what we need: 'The real, the spiritual, the Real.'”
“Much of Maddox's . . . True, False, None of the Above reads like a dinner party of literature, theology, and creative writing professors sitting around a large table surrounded by leather-bound books and old vinyls, sipping wine or whiskey, swapping stories that both bemoan and boast about students and the task of teaching and un-teaching. . . . Best of all . . . the poems. . . invite the authors. . . to the table to share both their wisdom and cynicism about the world in all its comedy, tragedy, and fairy tale; to share in our human seeking after the question of truth; and to demonstrate engaging those questions and truths through writing -- and in turn, teaching and reading, and . . . everyday living.”
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