Robert Hass: O Little Town of Bethlehem

Robert Hass
It is a poem about Christmas and about peace written when the butchery at Shiloh and Gettysburg and Bull Run was still a wound in public memory, and it carries, in the aftermath of that war, the intensity of the yearning for peace. Poignant for us, because Bethlehem continues, in our time, to be a focus of that longing.

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Contributors

Jason Gray

Jacqueline Osherow

Zeina Hashem Beck

Alicia Ostriker

Richard Chess

Mark Jarman

Kimberly Johnson

Sydney Lea

Kwame Dawes

Edward Hirsch

Maurice Manning

Margaret Gibson

Jay Hopler

Yehoshua November

Lorna Goodison

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Linda Gregerson

Kathleen Norris

Robert Hass

Kate Daniels

Scott Cairns

Vijay Seshadri

Shara McCallum

Dana Gioia

Kaveh Akbar

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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