Description
In every age and generation, the words and presence of Jesus Christ have given people belief, hope and purpose to develop their full potential. However at the same time, faith in Jesus Christ has often been outlawed as it challenges the overwhelming secular impetus of financial achievements, domination and power over others. To answer this unfortunate occurrence, poets throughout the years have taken up the message and person of Jesus. Often, in the side-lining or the outlawing of Christ, the poets, too, have been side-lined. Outlawed.
This book, developed from a series of talks and lectures at Loyola University, Chicago, follows the poets in their search for the true Christ, from the 8th century Dream of the Rood where Christ was a warrior hero climbing onto the Cross to defeat the rule of Satan, to poets like John Donne, George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, up to our own day, with modern Irish poets like Patrick Kavanagh, Pádraig J. Daly and James Harpur. The book presents a stimulating and intriguing anthology of poems that bring Christ to life in our own uncertain and challenging times.
About the Author
John F. Deane was born on Achill Island off the west coast of Ireland. He is the founder of Poetry Ireland, Ireland’s national poetry society, and its journal The Poetry Ireland Review. He is also founder and first editor of The Dedalus Press.
He has published many collections of poetry, including Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill: New & Selected poems, 2012; Semibreve, 2015, Give Dust a Tongue, 2015 and Achill: The Island, 2018. In 2008 he was visiting fellow in poetry in Boston College. In 2016 Deane was the Teilhard de Chardin Fellow in Catholic Studies at Loyola University, Chicago and in 2019 he was visiting poet at Notre Dame University in Indiana. John F. Deane is a member of Aosdána, and his latest poetry collection is Dear Pilgrims, 2018.