Sydney Lea: Precious Lord, Take My Hand

Sydney Lea
I am one who from his middle years onward has chosen to believe in grace, by which of course I mean unmerited favor. That the opening of the most famous hymn composed by Thomas Dorsey, the father of gospel music, came to mind strikes me in retrospect as oddly unsurprising, though in my all-white, Vermont Congregational church this is not a hymn much heard.

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Contributors

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Kate Daniels

Jacqueline Osherow

Maurice Manning

Scott Cairns

Yehoshua November

Kwame Dawes

Jason Gray

Kathleen Norris

Richard Chess

Dana Gioia

Linda Gregerson

Kaveh Akbar

Lorna Goodison

Jay Hopler

Mark Jarman

Zeina Hashem Beck

Margaret Gibson

Vijay Seshadri

Shara McCallum

Kimberly Johnson

Sydney Lea

Edward Hirsch

Alicia Ostriker

Robert Hass

Praise

Editor Johnson invited an array of poets and essayists to write of their choice hymns. He said of the poets, “They became like a temporary congregation to me.” Among essayists, Kwame Dawes writes a magnificent piece (the song chosen is “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”). Dawes states this is as not only a grounding principle of faith for him, but one shared equally with his wife, Lorna — it is “their hymn.” It’s a privilege to read the various hymns that are life-changing, and because poets feel as they write, it makes tender reading. The hymns’ lyrics are produced in their entirety which gives us the key to each essayist’s experience, and makes the book a dialogue between the speaker and his/her hymn.
-Grace Cavalieri
Washington Independent Review of Books

“I like to sing,’ begins Alicia Ostriker in her essay that joins so many necessary voices of contemporary poetry. Each piece collected in this book allows for memoir, prayer, and rebellion in its examination of what hymns have and can mean to the culture, to the heart. In these pages, the writers you’d think of as most interested in skepticism lay bare their politics and their personal history in order to better know their relationship to faith.”
—Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament

“From Zeina Hashem Beck’s memories of hearing prayers from Tripoli’s mosques to Linda Gregerson’s most beloved Christmas hymn, these essays reveal contemporary poets’ connections to spiritual songs: the lyric impulse, the importance of breath, the pull of anaphora and rhyme. Stars Shall Bend Their Voices is an illuminating—and luminous—collection.”
—Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones

Poets craft words to affect us; hymns sing words into our bodies. How wonderful, then, to read skilled poets speaking personally about hymns and spiritual songs they know. I love this wonderful compendium of poets who have taken hymns to heart—insightful, moving, and revelatory. -Donald Saliers, author of Music and Theology.

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