The poet and playwright Francis Harvey, born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, has spent most of his life in County Donegal, where he has published an extraordinary range of poetry and served as a mentor for many other poets. This book serves as a tribute to him and his literary achievement. His admirers from Ireland and around the world have collaborated in a collection that includes paintings and photographs of the Donegal landscape about which he writes so movingly, personal essays and poems celebrating his poetry, and critical essays that explore Harvey’s major themes in greater depth. Although Harvey’s poems have received critical acclaim – his poem, ‘Heron’ won the 1989 Guardian and World Wildlife Fund Poetry Competition; he was the recipient of the Peterloo Poets Prize; and went on to be elected to the prestigious affiliation of Irish artists, Aosdána – this is the long overdue first book-length critical study of his work.

In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition.

Critically examines the development of contemporary poetry looking at the work of Lowell, Ginsberg, Plath, Snodgrass, Berryman, Sexton, Ashbery, Roethke, O'Hara, Kinnell, Bly, and Levine.

In recent years, the Cognitive Grammar account of language and mind has become an influential framework for the study of textual meaning and interpretation. This book is the first to bring together applications of Cognitive Grammar for a range of stylistic purposes, including the analysis of both literary and non-literary discourse. Demonstrating the diverse range of uses for Cognitive Grammar, chapters apply this framework to diverse text-types including poetry, narrative fiction, comics, press reports, political discourse and music, as well as exploring its potential for the teaching of language and literature in a range of contexts. Combining cutting-edge research in cognitive, critical and pedagogical stylistics, New Directions in Cognitive Grammar and Style showcases the latest developments in this field and offers new insights into our experiences of literary and non-literary texts by drawing on current understandings of language and cognition.

The North American church is struggling. Our society seems to be coming apart at the seams and Christianity appears on the verge of losing its voice, its leadership, and its youth. The church’s calling is to cooperate with her Creator in the repair of the world. Instead, we struggle in the loss of the simplicity of the natural images of Jesus which compel us to engage tension, dependency, and the lesson of being on the margins. Until we learn to take our cues from a world we did not build, our actions will continue to prop up a society struggling from the weight of its own ethos. Part history, part cultural dialogue, part travelogue—always in conversation with the ancient and compelling biblical vision of shalom—Landscape of the Soul will encourage you to see beyond the shells of your constructed world to those places where dynamic spiritual rhythms can still be found.

Addressing the pervasive longing for healing and belonging, Montana resident and therapist Robyn Bridges invites us to come along on a personal journey into the sentient arms of the natural world. Through a series of short stories of actual encounters with moose and other wildlife in southwest Montana, we adventure with her to find strength and renewal as an antidote to the disappointment and sorrow inherent in life. Gleaned from her years spent alone in lively conversation with the natural world, Bridges offers a feminine and indigenous pathway to becoming more intimate with our inner nature through exploring the natural world. And, like the solitary moose who ambles through streams finding needed nourishment, we discover how to thrive even through the seasons of our own aloneness. Moose Medicine provides a moist template through which the reader's own instinctive knowing will tread. "At last, a book that explains how to connect with nature through heart and soul. Moose Medicine offers peaceful solutions for all our ills." Barbara McGowan, artist and author "For those hungering to find their way through spirit in nature, Robyn Bridges is a compassionate and knowing guide." Ginny Watts, M. Ed., psychotherapist, world dance artist, and author "Gentle and powerful, this beautifully written book guides the reader into self-reflection and new possibilities " Steve Guettermann, college lecturer and author

At eighty-two, Florida Scott-Maxwell felt impelled to write about her strong reactions to being old, and to the time in which we live. Until almost the end this document was not intended for anyone to see, but the author finally decided that she wanted her thoughts and feelings to reach others. Mrs. Scott-Maxwell writes: “I was astonished to find how intensely one lives in one’s eighties. The last years seemed a culmination and by concentrating on them one became more truly oneself. Though old, I felt full of potential life. It pulsed in me even as I was conscious of shrinking into a final form which it was my task and stimulus to complete.” The territory of the old is not Scott-Maxwell’s only concern. In taking the measure of the sum of her days as a woman of the twentieth century, she confronts some of the most disturbing conflicts of human nature—the need for differentiation as against equality, the recognition of the evil forces in our nature—and her insights are challenging and illuminating. The vision that emerges from her accumulated experience of life makes this a remarkable document that speaks to all ages.