{"product_id":"ruins-of-the-heart-six-longpoems-paperback","title":"Ruins of the Heart: Six Longpoems - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKristjana Gunnars\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The first thing one notices in Kristjana Gunnars' poetry is the stunning beauty of her lyrical mysticism. That would make the work well worth the read, but these poems do more. Restless, they widen; they take in the world. Moving beyond a search for metaphysical comfort, they confront age and the many faces of colonialism. Dante, in his concern for broken vows, offers the final wisdom: one of incompleteness. Like Kristjana, we will die thirsting for a lover we've too fleetingly known. Hopefully, like her, we will die singing.\"-DAVID CRAIG, poet, author of Easter and At the Bottom of the Year \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Canadian writer Kristjana Gunnars is a dazzling, accomplished writer of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and essays on aesthetics. Her readers always expect exhilarating density in her vision and her voice. \u003cem\u003eRuins of the Heart: Six Longpoems\u003c\/em\u003e delivers both the density and the exhilaration. She evokes Augustine, Dante, Eliot, Borges, Marvell, Lao Tzu, Rumi, as well as contemporary writers like Don McKay, Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Pierre Michon, Marilynne Robinson, Annie Dillard, Jake Kennedy, Edward Abbey, Patti Smith, and many other like-minded pilgrims. Gunnars tackles the spiritual and profane mysteries of dailiness, longing and desire, and the paradoxes of love and devotion in this world, \u003cem\u003enow\u003c\/em\u003e. I am so grateful for her eye on things. This book is a rich and wonderful weave of meditations driven by the insistencies of love and mortality and of the questioning of that love and mortality. As she herself writes, 'The ordinary is the sacred.'\"-JOHN LENT, author of \u003cem\u003eA Matins Flywheel\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eCantilevered Songs\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Kristjana Gunnars' luminous, profoundly intimate verse is as tender as an open sore and as strong as love. As Keats said of the best poetry, 'it emboldens the soul to accept mystery, ' for \u003cem\u003emystery-\u003c\/em\u003eof life, of the self, of God-invests every line, every letter of her work. What an honor it is to seek passage as her spiritual companion upon this journey.\"-MICHAEL MARTIN, author of \u003cem\u003eSophia in Exile\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Submerged Reality\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 144\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.34 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 13, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47581978067165,"sku":"9781621388432","price":24.81,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0811\/9867\/8237\/files\/aNGSPKpTeX9781621388432.webp?v=1773566750","url":"https:\/\/handfulofbooks.com\/products\/ruins-of-the-heart-six-longpoems-paperback","provider":"Handful of Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}