Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Wendy Doniger

Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions Wendy Doniger

Paul Mariani

Studies the relationship between the recorded history and myths of Hinduism, including how it influenced India's history, the role of women and lower castes, and the ongoing debate about tolerance and nonviolence.

An Alternative History

The Hindus

"A perceptive, insightful biography of perhaps the most important American poet of the twentieth century, Wallace Stevens, by an accomplished biographer and poet who traces Stevens's lifelong artistic quest"--

The Life of Wallace Stevens

The Whole Harmonium

From the day Paul Mariani arrives at Eastern Point Retreat House to take part in the five-hundred-year-old Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, he realizes that his expectations and assumptions about who he is, what he knows, and what he believes are about to change radically. In this profound memoir Mariani blends a brief life of St. Ignatius and meditations on the life of Jesus with the day-to-day unfolding of thirty days of silence at the retreat house. His journey of introspection, self-revelation, and spiritual renewal leads him to a new understanding of his relationship with God and of what it truly means to put others before oneself.

On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius

Thirty Days

In Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected and Revised Poems, Paul Mariani revisits forty years of writing poems, including revising many of his earlier lyrics, to shape his latest volume into a life lived and lived again over the past seven decades. The eight sections--or cantos--each composed of twelve poems, cover roughly a decade apiece and contour Mariani's search for answers to the constant interplay of the felt presence of the Mystery we call God as it plays with the modern imagination. Mariani's background is Catholic and broadly classic, and warmly embraces all aspects of Christianity and Judaism and the world even beyond those.The Poiema Poetry Series Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won't twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet's company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value--to get at something important. Ephesians 2:10 says, "We are God's workmanship . . ." poiema in Greek--the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship. These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries--through the diverse poetic visions of Dante

New, Selected, and Revised Poems

Epitaphs for the Journey

In Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected and Revised Poems, Paul Mariani revisits forty years of writing poems, including revising many of his earlier lyrics, to shape his latest volume into a life lived and lived again over the past seven decades. The eight sections--or cantos--each composed of twelve poems, cover roughly a decade apiece and contour Mariani's search for answers to the constant interplay of the felt presence of the Mystery we call God as it plays with the modern imagination. Mariani's background is Catholic and broadly classic, and warmly embraces all aspects of Christianity and Judaism and the world even beyond those. The Poiema Poetry Series Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won't twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet's company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value--to get at something important. Ephesians 2:10 says, "We are God's workmanship . . ." poiema in Greek--the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship. These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries--through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R.S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov--down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it. --D.S. Martin, Series Editor

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a richly imaginative life that he expressed in his poems. The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times and as the creator of a poetry that continues to shape how we understand and define ourselves. A lawyer who rose to become an insurance-company vice president, Stevens composed brilliant poems on long walks to work and at other stolen moments. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published when he was forty-four, drew on his profound understanding of Modernism to create a distinctive and inimitable American idiom. Over time he became acquainted with peers such as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, but his personal style remained unique. The complexity of Stevens's poetry rests on emotional, philosophical, and linguistic tensions that thread their way intricately through his poems. And while he can be challenging to understand, Stevens has proven time and again to be one of the most richly rewarding poets to read.

Dream Song is the story of John Berryman, one of the most gifted poets of a generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Using Berryman's unpublished letters and poetry, as well as interviews with those who knew him intimately, Paul Mariani captures Berryman's genius and the tragedy that dogged him, while at the same time illuminating one of the most provocative periods in American letters. Here we witness Berryman's struggles with alcohol and drugs, his obsession with women and fame, and his friendships with luminary writers of the century. Mariani creates an unforgettable portrait of a poet who, by the time of his suicide at age fifty-seven, had won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Paul Mariani

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