Contemplify

Exploring the subtle sacraments that animate our lives and the process of quieting the mind in words and silence.

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A plucked musical movement, hairpin poetic turns, mythical stories in rough harmonics. Baptize me into this Kitchen Music Society of Delights and Sorrows. No time like a pandemic to establish a new society. Perhaps by the end of this, you'll join the membership.

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"Christian Miller teaches us that the road to virtue lies in humility about our own virtue and an acceptance that others are struggling with their flaws. This is a very valuable book at a moment when our society could use a dose of openness and a sense of forgiveness."

- E.J. Dionne Jr., Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture, Georgetown University

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"Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection."

• Wendell Berry, Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front

In this episode, we'll explore the God of tree trimmers and the souvenir of deep breathing.

Birthdays are akin to over-excited neighbors. You either appreciate their intrusions or avoid them like Homer Simpson does Ned Flanders. I treat birthdays like Flanders. I love a good party, cake, and sing-song version of 'Happy Birthday', but I am slow to allow the spotlight to turn squarely onto my face. A strange confession for a guy with a podcast. But I do love the birthday questions...

"Many poets feel that they know the natural world, Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet."

- Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall

"Although Manning has been lauded throughout the country for his work — garnering accolades from some of the major poets of our time, like W.S. Merwin, in addition to the numerous awards he has received — he has found his place in this literary life, wearing it now as effortlessly as the patterned chambray shirts he favors. He is a man of the people, intent on bringing poetry and scenes of rural beauty to them, words of the past, but also the present — the poetry of preservation, of all of us."

—Jason Howard, Leo Weekly

"In that larger tradition of transcendent art, if we let them into our hearts, these new poems from Jericho Brown will awe and unsettle us."

- Frederick Speers, New York Journal of Books

I hoped for some last gesture beyond a handshake, writes Chris Dombrowski in Ragged Anthem, a soulful book of longing that is as comic as it is reflective. These poems sing of humankind in need of something it can only seem to get from the natural world, and of how we won t get it until we begin to understand ourselves as natural as any tree or river. Or as Dombrowski himself says, Again / I took daybreak for granted, easy / as mistaking pinecone for wasp nest, / wasp nest for shed antler, antler / for branch. Here, these so-called mistakes make for discovery that approaches the magic of revelation..