Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions by Robert McDowell

Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions

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Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions by Robert McDowell
  • Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions by Robert McDowell
Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions

Washington Square Press

Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions

by Robert McDowell

$18.99
$18.99
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 "[When we read and write poetry, ] it is as if a long-settled cloud in our mind suddenly dissipates, and we are divine once again." -- from the Introduction

Poetry is the language of devotion in prayer, chant, and song. Reading and writing poetry creates clarity, deepens and expands spiritual inquiry, and cultivates wisdom, compassion, self-confidence, patience, and love. In author Robert McDowell's words, poetry makes you into a tuning fork of the Divine.

But poetry has disappeared over the centuries from religious ceremonies, academic curricula, and public discourse. In Poetry as Spiritual Practice, the first inspirational and instructional guide to combine poetry and spirituality, McDowell restores poetry as the natural language of spiritual practice and invites you to recognize poetry as "the pure sound and shape of your spirit."

Vividly illustrated with a wide range of poems from all historical eras and poetic traditions, numerous religions and faiths, and McDowell's own and his students' work, Poetry as Spiritual Practice will reintroduce you to the unique pleasure of verse. And meditations throughout will allow you to integrate reading and writing poetry into your spiritual journeys and daily life.

Since many of us have long forgotten, or never learned, the mechanics and terminology of poetry -- trochaic feet and tropes trip us up; we can't tell a villanelle from its shorter cousin, rondeau; and a terza rima may as well be a tanka -- this is also an instructional handbook on reading and writing poetry. An engaging guide through the landscape of world poetry, McDowell argues along the way for the many practical benefits of poetic literacy.

Making poetry an essential part of daily rituals, aspirations, and intentions will put you on the path to greater meaning, growth, and peace in your life. At once an engaging technical primer, a profound meditation on the relationship between poetry and the Divine, and an inspirational guide for integrating poetry into spiritual practice, Poetry as Spiritual Practice will become a cherished companion.
Book Details
Publisher:
Washington Square Press
ISBN:
9781416566526
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
288
Authors:
Robert McDowell
Published Date:
2016-12-24
Language:
English
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About Robert McDowell

Robert McDowell founded the periodical The Reaper with Mark Jarman in 1980. He co-edited it for nine years, and in 1985 the two founded Story Line Press, which he directed for twenty-two years and which is now an imprint of Red Hen Press. Born in Alhambra, California, he earned a BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied with Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock, and an MFA at Columbia University. He founded the annual Poets' Prize and the Rural Readers Project, and has taught at Bennington College and the University of Southern Indiana. He publishes Homestead Lighthouse Press, which issued Sweet Wolf: Selected & New Poems in 2021; Poetry as Spiritual Practice is a prose handbook.

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