A multilayered study and poetic evocation of one of the world's greatest architectural wonders, Strasbourg Cathedral.

This book takes one step further the long-standing debate among scholars of religious antiquity over when and why a parting of the ways happened between Judaism and Christianity in the early centuries of the Common Era. It explores three interrelated questions: what might have happened to prevent that split; how might Western religion have looked had the split not occurred; and how might features of that religion, which never existed, nonetheless manifest in some of the literature and artworks of the past half millennium. The book envisions a religion that stands between historical Judaism and Christianity—a counterfactual construction that challenges Jews and Christians to rethink their actual identities today.

This diverse collection of poems and companion essays by forty nationally and internationally known poets allows readers to experience the creative process through the eyes and voice of each poet. No matter how often we are told that revision is an essential component of poetic composition, it can be difficult to resist the temptation to think of the poem as having sprung spontaneously, Athena-like, from the writer's head. By exposing readers to the finished product as well as the poet's own account of the poem's creation, Making Poems offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on the poetic process that will fascinate both beginning and established writers. The book also affords poetry instructors an opportunity to demonstrate to their students the ways in which poems can originate from seemingly mundane and unlikely sources.

In this evocative memoir, Nancy Avery Dafoe shares the heart-wrenching experience of caring for her ailing mother as she struggled, and ultimately lost her battle, with Alzheimer's disease. Weaving poetry throughout, Dafoe tells her family's story in the hope of helping those who are navigating the murky waters of Alzheimer's. She presents different approaches and practical advice for dealing with the difficult life transition that occurs when parents become ill. At its center, An Iceberg in Paradise is not only a tribute to love in the face of loss but also an exploration of memory, our human connections, and holding on until there is nothing left to hold.

Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.