Brent Funderburk

A Year of Prayers

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“"A journal 'launched' at the Creator, written most often in solitude, where he finds himself 'like a winter foot without a sock,' daily, inside his Texas cabin, in a canoe, or trundling though autumn woods, Bartlett's 'A Year of Prayers' heralds his shape-shifting Lord as 'the maestro of majestic cohesion.' His radiant verses often echo the playfulness of G. M. Hopkins, the shocking heart jolts of Reynolds Price, and the fierce, psalmic inquisitions and jubilations of King David. 365 days of luminous tanagers and hummingbird wings, 'pink moon seasons' and 'hemlock canopies,' nursing homes and Roman villas, soldiers and children, DNA and cancer, fire ants and catfish, art and music, his own blindness and visionary ecstasies, the deaths of his parents and births of grandchildren; all seen as gifts, on his 'peaceful or tumultuous ride' on the 'trail to your love'--encountering God.”