The Ministries of Light: Poems and verse epistles

Abstract

The Ministries of Light: Poems and Verse Epistles is a collection of nine original poetic sequences, embracing an array of genres--journal letter, elegy, and lyric--and traditional verse forms--haiku, sonnet, blank verse, glosa, prose poem. Taken as a whole, the work is an extended meditation on personal poetics and ethics: how can one continue to live consciously and in relation in an increasingly atomized and automated world? and how does one forge a specifically poetic language expansive enough to accommodate extra-literary (social and philosophical) concerns without sacrificing the compression that has traditionally lent the English lyric its emotional resonance and power.