Scott Cairns has gathered every poem he's ever published in book form, and has also added previously uncollected work spanning three decades. A careful introduction by Gregory Wolfe and a tribute preface by Richard Howard make this the ultimate collection of Cairns's work. "Among American poets of religious belief at the present time, none is more skillful, authentic, or convincing than Scott Cairns." —B. H. Fairchild, poet, National Book Critics Circle Award winner ...
Poet and literature professor Scott Cairns ran headlong into his midlife crisis – a fairly common experience among men nearing the age of fifty—while walking on the beach with his Labrador. His was not a desperate attempt to recapture youth, filled with sports cars and younger women. Instead, Cairns realized his spiritual life was advancing at a snail's pace and time was running out. Midlife crisis for this this Baptist turned Eastern Orthodox manifested as a desperate need to seek out...
First published in hardcover as Love’s Immensity, this powerful book of selections from the mystics East and West, rendered into poetry, is now available in paperback for the first time.
Received an Award of Merit from Christianity Today, 2009 and chosen as one of the Top 10 Religion Books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly Is there meaning in our afflictions? With the thoughtfulness of a pilgrim and the prose of a poet, Scott Cairns takes us on a soul-baring journey through «the puzzlement of our afflictions.» Probing ancient Christian wisdom for revelation in his own pain, Cairns challenges us toward a radical revision of the full meaning and breadth of human suffering. ...
Anaphora—the repetition of a word or phrase—is a strategy that assists coherence, and draws attention to the repeated terms. In Eucharistic settings, it also indicates the specific liturgical moment when the bread and wine are consecrated, becoming what we in the Eastern Church are pleased to name the Holy Mysteries. Certain poems in this collection employ overt anaphora; many do not. Still, they invite a sense of words as doing more than naming, more than serving as arrows pointing to prior...
