Kate Daniels – Stars Shall Bend Their Voices

Kate Daniels
My early experiences of Catholic worship – first, as a child in a traditional Latin Mass, and later as a college student attending a revisionary, hippie-style Mass in the round – set the stage for my encounter with this very simple hymn which has come to mean more to me than any other.

Contributors

Kathleen Norris

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Vijay Seshadri

Margaret Gibson

Alicia Ostriker

Linda Gregerson

Robert Hass

Jacqueline Osherow

Jason Gray

Kaveh Akbar

Kwame Dawes

Mark Jarman

Dana Gioia

Yehoshua November

Maurice Manning

Jay Hopler

Edward Hirsch

Kate Daniels

Lorna Goodison

Richard Chess

Zeina Hashem Beck

Scott Cairns

Sydney Lea

Kimberly Johnson

Shara McCallum

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.

Tag: Kate Daniels

Kate Daniels: One Bread, One Body