Scott Cairns
Список книг автора Scott CairnsSlow Pilgrim
Scott Cairns has gathered every poem he's ever published in book form, and has also added previously uncollected work spanning three decades. A careful introduction by Gregory Wolfe and a tribute preface by Richard Howard make this the ultimate collection of Cairns's work.
"Among American poets of religious belief at the present time, none is more skillful, authentic, or convincing than Scott Cairns." —B. H. Fairchild, poet, National Book Critics Circle Award winner
"With Dostoyevsky and the psalmists as his traveling companions, Cairns pursues his peregrinations through frustration and pleasure, desolation and eros, step by step realizing 'how / fraught, how laden the visible is.'" —Kimberly Johnson, poet, author of A Metaphorical God
Slow Pilgrim was named Englewood's Best Poetry Book of the year in 2015 for the life and flourishing of the Church.
Anaphora
Anaphora—the repetition of a word or phrase—is a strategy that assists coherence, and draws attention to the repeated terms. In Eucharistic settings, it also indicates the specific liturgical moment when the bread and wine are consecrated, becoming what we in the Eastern Church are pleased to name the Holy Mysteries.
Certain poems in this collection employ overt anaphora; many do not. Still, they invite a sense of words as doing more than naming, more than serving as arrows pointing to prior substance; intermittently, these words may acquire due substance of their own, partaking of more than is apparent, but is nonetheless so, and is present.
Short Trip to the Edge
Poet and literature professor Scott Cairns ran headlong into his midlife crisis – a fairly common experience among men nearing the age of fifty—while walking on the beach with his Labrador. His was not a desperate attempt to recapture youth, filled with sports cars and younger women. Instead, Cairns realized his spiritual life was advancing at a snail's pace and time was running out. Midlife crisis for this this Baptist turned Eastern Orthodox manifested as a desperate need to seek out prayer.
Originally published in 2007, this new, expanded edition of Short Trip to the Edge is the story of Scott's spiritual journey to the mystical island of Mt. Athos. With twenty monasteries and thirteen sketes scattered across its sloping terrain, the Holy Mountain was the perfect place for Scott to seek out a prayer father and discover the stillness of the true prayer life. Told with wit and exquisite prose, his narrative takes the reader from a beach in Virginia to the most holy Orthodox monasteries in the world to a monastery in Arizona and back again as Scott struggles to find his prayer path. Along the way, Cairns forged relationships with monks, priests, and fellow pilgrims.
"Scott Cairns is not only one of the most vital poets of our time but also a prose writer of uncommon vision, and in Short Trip to the Edge, his account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of Athos, in northern Greece, he weaves together a personal history of faith, a wealth of learning, and the wisdom of the ages to create a book for spiritual seekers from every religious denomination. What better guide, and travel companion, than Scott Cairns? I would follow him to the edge – and beyond." – Christopher Merrill, author of Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain
"Mt Athos is 'the edge' in more ways than one, a place both beautiful and ruggedly challenging, alive with spiritual power that shares the same qualities. Cairns is the ideal guide – relaxed, invitingly conversational, and often amused, but always evoking the awe that these mysteries deserve." – Frederica Mathewes-Green
"In Short Trip To The Edge, Scott Cairns pulls back the curtain and gives us a glimpse of the spiritual energy present on the Holy Mountain. He approaches his prose with the soul and skill of a poet. It is at once simple and profound—accessible and ineffable. Scott has the boldness to confront the deepest parts of our human nature with fierce honesty and humor. It's a place where «pilgrims are a mixed bag,» holy relics make the heart race and true spirituality is an «acquired taste.» The reader, (or should I say pilgrim) is invited to travel along a beautiful and potentially frightening road into the heart of silence, repentance and prayer. There is a palpable sense of being there: surrounded by a timeless chorus of voices chanting on The Holy Mountain, praying for the life of the world. One slowly loses the desire to arrive and begins to embrace the possibility of «always becoming.» Scott Cairns pours out his soul in this brilliant and much needed book. It is well worth the taking this short trip to the edge!" —Jonathan Jackson, star of the hit ABC show Nashville and author of The Mystery Of Art
"A Short Trip to the Edge is an exceptional and compelling book. Scott Cairns has a poet's eye and a story-tellers flair, so that mystical experience and profound theology are bodied forth in memorable images and vivid scenes, instead of being lost in abstraction. This book witnesses to the way ancient truths can become vivid, true and life-changing in the here and now. This is a short trip you will never forget." —Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite, Girton College, Cambridge
Endless Life
First published in hardcover as Love’s Immensity, this powerful book of selections from the mystics East and West, rendered into poetry, is now available in paperback for the first time.
End of Suffering
Received an Award of Merit from Christianity Today, 2009 and chosen as one of the Top 10 Religion Books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly
Is there meaning in our afflictions?
With the thoughtfulness of a pilgrim and the prose of a poet, Scott Cairns takes us on a soul-baring journey through «the puzzlement of our afflictions.» Probing ancient Christian wisdom for revelation in his own pain, Cairns challenges us toward a radical revision of the full meaning and breadth of human suffering.
Clear-eyed and unsparingly honest, this new addition to the literature of suffering is reminiscent of The Year of Magical Thinking as well as the works of C. S. Lewis. Cairns points us toward hope in the seasons of our afflictions, because «in those trials in our lives that we do not choose but press through—a stillness, a calm, and a hope become available to us.»
"The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it." –Simone Weil
"Like most people I, too, have been blindsided by personal grief now and again over the years. And I have an increasingly keen sense that, wherever I am, someone nearby is suffering now.
For that reason, I lately have settled in to mull the matter over, gathering my troubled wits to undertake a difficult essay, more like what we used to call an assay, really—an earnest inquiry. I am thinking of it just now as a study in suffering, by which I hope to find some sense in affliction, hoping—just as I have come to hope about experience in general—to make something of it."
Scott Cairns is the author of six collections of poetry including Compass of Affection, and the memoir Short Trip to the Edge. His poetry and nonfiction have been included in Best American Spiritual Writing and other anthologies. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. He is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Missouri.