In this book of homemade psalms, Brooks Haxton brings the poetry of the original psalmists, their awe and their music, into our world of jet planes and space travel, automatic rifles and suburban pleasures. As he writes in his preface, “I take psalms less as doctrine than as outcries, and I cry back in these poems from whatever vantage I can find.” The result is lucid, touching verse that connects the exalted language of scripture with everyday experience. In a poem called “Dark,” for example, Haxton riffs on the gorgeous line “The night also is thine” (Psalm 74) as he stands on his front stoop on a particularly black night. “Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures” (Psalm 36) brings forth a poem about the perilous joy of bodysurfing. And his response to Psalm 58, “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance,” becomes a poem about Westmoreland in Vietnam.
These vibrant scraps of ancient text reverberate with intimations of the immediate present, and Haxton’s poetry, in response, is fresh, funny, and tender. In the pain of doubt, and even in the burlesque of irreverence, he explores the mystery of our abiding passion for the sacred.
BROOKS HAXTON has published eight books of poetry, a nonfiction account of his son's career in high-stakes poker, and translations from Greek, French, and German. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and his nonfiction has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. He wrote the script for a film on the life and work of Tennessee Williams, broadcast in the American Masters series. A recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and others, Haxton has taught for many years in the graduate creative writing programs of Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College.
View titles by Brooks Haxton
In this book of homemade psalms, Brooks Haxton brings the poetry of the original psalmists, their awe and their music, into our world of jet planes and space travel, automatic rifles and suburban pleasures. As he writes in his preface, “I take psalms less as doctrine than as outcries, and I cry back in these poems from whatever vantage I can find.” The result is lucid, touching verse that connects the exalted language of scripture with everyday experience. In a poem called “Dark,” for example, Haxton riffs on the gorgeous line “The night also is thine” (Psalm 74) as he stands on his front stoop on a particularly black night. “Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures” (Psalm 36) brings forth a poem about the perilous joy of bodysurfing. And his response to Psalm 58, “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance,” becomes a poem about Westmoreland in Vietnam.
These vibrant scraps of ancient text reverberate with intimations of the immediate present, and Haxton’s poetry, in response, is fresh, funny, and tender. In the pain of doubt, and even in the burlesque of irreverence, he explores the mystery of our abiding passion for the sacred.
BROOKS HAXTON has published eight books of poetry, a nonfiction account of his son's career in high-stakes poker, and translations from Greek, French, and German. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and his nonfiction has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. He wrote the script for a film on the life and work of Tennessee Williams, broadcast in the American Masters series. A recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and others, Haxton has taught for many years in the graduate creative writing programs of Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College.
View titles by Brooks Haxton
