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Since 1900, the Christian Century has published reporting, commentary, poetry, and essays on the role of faith in a pluralistic society.
© 2023 The Christian Century.
Understanding Czesław Miłosz
Eva Hoffman, a fellow exile from Poland, writes about the Nobel-winning author like no one else could.
Praying the hours with W. H. Auden
The poet’s Horae Canonicae sequence is an underappreciated spiritual classic.
The making of God
“I don’t believe in God as character,” says poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, “but I do believe in God as plot.”
Anthony Hecht’s poetic vision
W. H. Auden’s most distinguished heir wrote poems that bear witness to history with great depth of feeling.
A magical world of daily bread
In Luci Shaw’s new collection of poems, ordinary objects trespass their boundaries.
The Iowa poet-priest who mastered haiku
Raymond Roseliep quietly became one of the most highly regarded haiku poets in the English language.
A Job who’s read Job
Poet Michael Shewmaker imagines a suffering Christian in Kilgore, Texas, with three unhelpful friends.
A poet converted by her own writing
Denise Levertov’s intuitive grasp of incarnation drove her politics, her poetry, and eventually her religious discernment.
Marjorie Maddox’s capacious poetry
She can (and will) do anything with this English language she so clearly loves.
A poet’s truth at the graveside
At the interment, the holy words I needed to hear weren’t from the Bible.
On the road to Emmaus, “burning” is a positive word.
by Jenna Smith
The voices of American poets
Edward Hirsch’s labor of love celebrates centuries of American verse, from Anne Bradstreet to Joy Harjo.
The great and strange John Donne
Katherine Rundell’s biography offers something new: she matches the poet’s energy with her own.
In witness to a wilting world
Tishani Doshi’s poetic voice dwells between the scriptural and the cultural, between lesson and observation.
A fresh translation of Nelly Sachs’s later poems
For Sachs, flight is multivalent: her flight from the Nazis, any refugee’s flight from oppression, God’s flight from God.
Paul Mariani seeks wisdom among the ghosts
The poet, now in his eighties, asks profound questions in a dazzling array of poems.
Joy Harjo gives words to the poet warriors who were her ancestors
The Indigenous writer’s new memoir understands memory as counsel and ritual as the potency of love.
Anya Silver’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful last poems
Saint Agnostica is a chronicle of grief, love, and mystery.
A new translation of “The Dark Night of the Soul” thrills with adventure
In St. John of the Cross’s poetry, the dark night is also a night of profound, even ecstatic beauty.
by Amy Frykholm
Elegies for Jacki
Poet Peter Cooley logs the year following his wife’s death with courage and brutal honesty.