When Poets Pray

Prayer and poetry have long been intertwined. Writers of verse often find words for what people most desire, dread, and grieve, and those same words can become prayers. Their work tends to quiet the reader, asking for a pause and a turn inward before moving on, while also circling the unknown and joining the strange to the familiar.

Marilyn McEntyre offers twenty-four carefully chosen poems, some written as prayers and others that reflect on prayer. Her essays on them read as contemplative practices rather than academic analysis, and they suggest possibilities more than they lay down rules. She writes from her own experience of what these poets gave her, and she hopes readers seeking spiritual companionship will find similar gifts.

The poets whose work she considers span centuries and traditions. They include Hildegard of Bingen, George Herbert, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, and Lucille Clifton, along with many others. Psalm 139:1-12 is also among the texts she reflects on.