Selected and new poems

by Daniel Berrigan

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385030991
• ISBN13: 9780385030991
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Untamed and dangerous faith set in verse

Father Daniel Berrigan, Roman Catholic Priest, S.J. and hardcore peace activist had more than numerous lengthy prison terms in common with his equally courageous brother Phillip: they could both write fantastic poetry in or out of the penal system. This is some of the finest Catholic poetry I have ever encountered--which is surprising, since I expected nothing more than a few "radicalized" relics from a time long past when people cared how many bombs their country dropped on other people. Not at all: Berrigan retains a fine sense of diction, culture, and the obvious influence of 1920's Paris; the sense that Berrigan had been reading Rene Char grew very strong as I continued reading. A lifelong witness to merciful truth amidst murder and blood, Berrigan retains his sense of Christian innocence while never forgetting the poor or his sense of social conscience: "hopelessness stands in their eyes/dry despair, hands broken upon stones/eroded lives/i long at ilness to induce--as a shell drawn from seas--generative, uncorrupted--some birth tears had not dared come upon.." Father Berrigan's poetry is a chronicle of the mess made of the world by a few to the detriment of the many. In the tradition of Fondane or Gascoyne, however, the hope of the divine bursts through when the bottom is about to fall out. In his "Prayer", written in Danbury Prison, Berrigan offers a joyful plea and states his life misson: "I must construct, out of oddments, abrasions, vapor trails, dust, pedicabs/three crosshatch continents, Brooks Brothers embassies/their male models dressed to kill/all He meant and means. I touch shrapnel and flesh, and risk my reason/for the truth's sake, an ignorant hung head/Man of one book, stand me in stead." This is the lived truth in a collection of poetry--something we rarely see anymore. A must read.