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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811
EAN: 9780880014755
ISBN: 088001475X
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1999-08-26
Publisher: Ecco
Product Release Date: 1999-07-09
Studio: Ecco

Robert Bly's ground-breaking anthology of spiritual poems, the result of over a decade of personal research, celebrates the ongoing role of the divine in literature. For as long as people have lived together in communities and built enduring cultures, they have sung and written about their relationship with the God or gods they believed in. In the words of the Irish writer Sean O'Faolain, "all good writing in the end is the writer's argument with God."

The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy gathers poems from a wide range of cultures and traditions and divides them into ten parts, each forming a resonant exploration of a specific and timeless spiritual question. Selections include the work of Dante, Dogen, Goethe, Hafez, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Kabir, Lalla, Li Po, Mirabai, Mary Oliver, Owl Woman, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Rumi, in addition to Blake, Dickinson, Donne, Hopkins, Stevens, Yeats, and other important English and American poets. Together these poems form both a celebration and a quest--a kind of pilgrim's progress that embraces all the rich wisdom of East and West, ancient and modern, male and female, spirit and flesh.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Global, Historical Buffet of Spirituality
Review: Robert Bly considers many different aspects of spirituality from many different angles in the poetry collection. It's not a big shock that some poets whom Bly has translated are represented, such as Kabir, Mirabai, Antonio Machado and Tomas Transtromer. But there are many other poems with completely different styles in this book, such as Gerald Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickenson.

In the same way that you don't eat everything offered at an all-you-can-eat buffet, if you sit down and read this book from beginning to end, you won't find each and every poem speaking to your condition. But you will almost certainly find some poems which will deeply move you. This is a book to have close by, and browse through every so often.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: READINGS THAT MIRROR THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
Review: Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
Beautiful book, arranged like the spiritual journey: At first, you feel the call, have a big experience, make a commitment, then forget it all, do your thing in the world until you get in trouble, then commit to spirit again, forget it, go back to the world, mess up, back to spirit, etc. Until you finally really commit. Takes the reader through poetry demonstrating a deeper and deeper commitment to and knowledge of the sacred. Many traditions. Great introduction to the Indian and Middle eastern poets: Poems by Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai, Lalli, all in one volume.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Truly Joyous
Review: I highly recommend this wonderful collection of poems dedicated to the range of experiences in the quest for spiritual understanding. All those with this quest in mind would do well to read the poetry found here.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Three lines of poetry send me into a reverie
Review: I chanced upon this book and now rate it as amongst the best on my bookshelf. Many poems were written so long ago (especially Rumi and Kabir) and the power and insight is amazing. That a writer (with a good translator in Coleman Barks) from 800 years ago could touch me so deeply in my spirit is truly amazing. Well, the issues of the spirit transcend time, place and religion probably. I can read 3 lines of a poem by Rumi and it can send me into a reverie for half an hour. The way he expresses his relationship to God seems to touch a deep chord that I cannot quite explain in words. There are mainly 3-4 poets in this book that I especially love and continue to return to. There are others that I hope to connect with in the future. I highly recommend this book to help you think is a deep way about your relationship to your spiritual self and to God.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A masterful collection
Review: Robert Bly's compilation of sacred poetry is best read to the music of Loreena McKennit or Hildegard of Bingen. Lights should be low, or natural, and a blank journal should be nearby, ready for you to record your revelations and insights. Bly's assortment is remarkable in that it lifts the reader to divinity by celebrating humanism. A book that positively radiates light.

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