Still Pilgrim: Poems - Softcover

O'Donnell, Angela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612618642 ISBN 13: 9781612618647

Publisher: Paraclete Press, 2017

Synopsis

"If rhyme and meter are, as Heaney said, the table manners of the language arts, then Angela Alaimo O'Donnell has set out a sumptuous feast, if not bardic, then beatific, recalling a time when pilgrims knew to spread good word by heart." –Thomas Lynch, author of Walking Papers and The Sin-eater: A Breviary

Still Pilgrim is a collection of poems that chronicles the universal journey of life as seen through the eyes of a keenly-observant friend and fellow traveler. The reader accompanies the Still Pilgrim as she navigates the experiences that constitute her private history yet also serve to remind us of our own moments of enlightenment, epiphany, and encounter with mystery. Each of the 58 poems of the collection marks a way station along the pilgrimage, a kind of holy well where the Pilgrim and reader might stop and draw knowledge, solace, joy, and the strength to continue along the path.

At the center of this spiritual travel book lies a paradox: the Pilgrim's desire for the gift of stillness amid the flux and flow of time, change, and circumstance. "Be still and know that I am God," sings the Psalmist, channeling the voice of the divine. "Teach us to care and not care. Teach us to sit still," prays the poet, T.S. Eliot. Still Pilgrim depicts and embodies this human dilemma--our inevitable movement through time, moment by moment, day by day, and the power of art to stop both time and our forward march, to capture the present moment so we might savor the flavor of life.

"The Still Pilgrim's history consists of flashes of joy and visitations of sorrow, engagement with saints and with artists (the Pilgrim's personal patron saints), epiphanies sparked by words and songs and stories, revelations triggered by encounters with beauty and terror. The gentle reader who perseveres through these poems is no longer merely a reader--he or she is a partner in pilgrimage and a friend. These poems have become your poems, this story your story, bespeaking our (un)common beginnings and our equally (un)common end." –Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, from the Afterword

About this title

Review:

"In Angela O'Donnell's collection Still Pilgrim, we find poetic discipline wedded to discipleship, as handmaid to the exigencies of love. . . .O'Donnell reminds us that, while we are all in constant motion, 'hurtling through the universe, ' we travel best by gravitating toward the stillness of belonging, attuned not only to who we are, but also, more importantly, for whom and in whom we are. Still Pilgrim speaks, sacredly, of this outward/inward journey where to seek ourselves is to empty our self into the hands of the Beloved."--Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia's Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014, author of five poetry collections and editor of two poetry anthologies

"I am amazed and awestruck by Angela Alaima O'Donnell's Still Pilgrim. Her choice of form, the sonnet sequence, is a sign of her devotion to the best and most valuable of the highest literary tradition of the past. Alongside this fidelity, she makes the daring move of including what has been considered undesirable subject matter for contemporary writers: the ordinary lived life of women, and the ardor and anguish of a religious life. Still Pilgrim insists that there is a place for a mother's garters and the Beatitudes, that the arrows that pierced St. Theresa's bowels are the very same that pierce the new mother's heart as she holds her child. Still Pilgrim is a remarkable achievement." --Mary Gordon, author, most recently, of The Love of My Youth and The Liar's Wife

"Still Pilgrim is a collection of poems that chronicles the journey of life as seen through the eyes of a keenly-observant friend and fellow traveler. The reader accompanies the Still Pilgrim as she maps universal terrain, navigating the experiences that constitute her private history yet also serve to remind the reader of his or her own moments of enlightenment, epiphany, and encounter with mystery. Each of the 58 poems of the collection marks a way station along the pilgrimage where the Pilgrim and reader might pause and ponder before continuing with the inevitable march forward." --Englewood Review of Books

About the Author:

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell is a poet and professor at Fordham University where she teaches English, creative writing, and American Catholic studies. She is also the Associate Director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in America, Commonweal, and Christianity and Literature. She lives with her husband in Bronxville, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1612618642
• ISBN 13: 9781612618647
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96