Tania Runyan

Alphabet Year

Arts & Literature

“I thought I knew my ABCs--until I read Devon Miller-Duggan's Alphabet Year. The poet's collection of both 'disorderly' and 'proper' abecedarians accomplishes a technical tour-de-force that challenges and delights, an adherence to form that mysteriously unleashes language at its most spiritual, penetrating, and free. These are poems to explore and savor many times over.”

Collage of Seoul

Arts & Literature

“What once was lost is found, lost, and found again in the prismatic Collage of Seoul, a journey to the complicated heart of adoption, identity, family, and faith. These ardent lyrics and narratives ring to the slightest touch, reverberating the sojourner's ache for beauty and meaning. 'Perhaps,' Newman writes, 'there was a second garden in Eden.' I believe these poems were germinated there.”

In a Strange Land

Arts & Literature

“Today’s poets of faith find themselves dwelling ‘in a strange land’ indeed, bridging the gaps between faith and doubt, church and art, and other false dichotomies that attempt to keep these bold voices at bay. Poiema’s newest anthology is a testament to the incarnational work of the word—and words—speaking through our freshest poetic talents. Some uplifting, some heartbreaking, some challenging, and some darkly hilarious, these poems bespeak a surge of Christian poetry on the brink of a twenty-first-century explosion.”

Love and other Mysteries

Arts & Literature

“In Love and other Mysteries, Willome explores the ways in which story and mystery intersect in the particularities of life, whether she is losing a wedding ring in the Rockies, waiting out a storm, or cleaning a bathroom after a loved one’s death. Structured around Song of Songs and the rosary, and simmering with a vivid, well-hiked Texas landscape throughout its pages, this collection is a love letter to that inexplicable space between heaven and earth that drives us to wonder and love.”

Say This Prayer into the Past

Arts & Literature

“A Paul Willis poem is a balm for the tired heart: the breath of a sleeping child, an FDNY hero climbing stairs, a walk through the Glacier Peak Wilderness with the healing 'sound of rivers in our ears.' With both reverence and wit, Willis finds the glint (and sometimes explosion) of joy in all of his travels, from a classroom window to Sawtooth Ridge. Say This Prayer Into the Past: your field guide to life and beauty.”

Slender Warble

Arts & Literature

“In her Note to Readers, poet Susan Cowger reminds us that ‘the presence of God reliably resists being pinned down.’ The pages that follow illuminate that tension with breathless beauty; not only the natural imagery, but the poems’ unpunctuated open spaces echo his powerful yet inscrutable ways. Cowger paints alongside him with ‘Thunderheads / [that] blossom between mine and Thine’s / lines,’ songs that call us closer to the deep.”

Still Working It Out

Arts & Literature

“Still Working it Out works out the salvation of daily life--from squawking guinea hens to a fed-up janitor, to household rules for the remote control--within the circle of grace. Applying the same lyrical intensity, Davis does not shy away from tsunamis, 9/11, or the second coming, but allows life's bewilderments to resonate . . . beautifully. . . . This is a work of hard-earned wisdom and wit, a collection I will return to again and again.”

Swan Bones

Arts & Literature

“These are poems of home—the flowers, church yards, family tables, and alleyways that continue to shape our lives even as our addresses change. Bowman breathes life into the ‘big haunted souls’ of small towns and memories, calling us to consider our own histories with tenderness and awe. This collection is a gorgeous debut worthy of several, savoring reads.”

True, False, None of the Above

Arts & Literature

“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.”

What I Have I Offer with Two Hands

Arts & Literature

“Jacob Stratman’s first collection blooms at the intersection of art, faith, and family—the synthesis of a life fully and thoughtfully lived. . . . Stratman offers with two generous hands a guidebook to beauty, grace, and ‘joy / in the mystery of the unknown, / the unknowable.’ A wise and winsome debut.”

Where the Sky Opens

Arts & Literature

“In her debut collection Where the Sky Opens, Klein invites us, her 'journey mates,' to encounter a world more beautiful, complex and fragile than we often expect at the beginning of our faith histories. From the natural wonder of toads and lichens and mountain trails to the "wild, savory, perilous, graced" marriage relationship, these poems illuminate a sensitivity to life's lights and shadows through some of the most lush and visually intricate language I've read in years. Klein does not only write about, but through the loss of faith--and the love that redeems it--in 'the kingdom emerging in guises we never knew.'”

Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

Arts & Literature

“Your Twenty-first Century Prayer Life should be required reading for all churchgoers, for all people who have struggled to pray, practice Lenten disciplines, or survive infuriating sermons. ‘Form and content matter,’ Hansen writes, ‘but not/as much as the posture of the heart.’ The quiet, but no less pointedly honest, voice in these poems plumbs the marrow of doubt to reveal the ‘beautiful ache of belief’ that issues from a closely examined spiritual life.”