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How to be a Contemplative: Poems and Brief Reflections
by Judith Valente
30 Poems ~ 30 Reflections ~ 89 pages
Price: $20.00
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN; 978-1-63980-725-3
To Order: Kelsay Books
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Wallace Stevens, among the premier contemplative poets of the twentieth century, in his introductory poem to “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” had this to say about the meditative power of poetry: The vivid transparence that you [poetry] bring is peace. Judith Valente’s How to Become a Contemplative, spans a wide range of contemplative themes. This poet is in the “soul-nourishing” business. In poem after poem, life takes on an ever-deepening inner significance, as in these lines from “Encountering Silence: “It is in the wordless ceiling beams / overflowing with presence / and the beadlike seeds of the holly oak / that crack open to reveal the wisdom of patience.” A brief but pregnant “For Reflection” paragraph follows each poem. A rich world of mind and heart awaits the perceptive reader of How to Become a Contemplative.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
Judith Valente shows us not only how to be a contemplative in our often busy and distracted world, but also how to slow down–and become more human. As she writes in “Lauds:” “I ask the day for its one word, and it gives it to me: / Enough.” These sumptuous, grounded poems “of lamentation and light” guide us toward the numinous in every fresh spiritual insight. In Valente’s masterful hands, everything comes alive and sings, “overflowing with presence …even the soap dish, tea cup, and porch steps.” The ordinary leads us back to the sacred in a book I already treasure.
–James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage & Self-Compassion and editor of How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude & Hope
Judith Valente’s collection is a meditative memoir, a wisdom book, a companion for dark nights and darker days–but most of all it is a love letter–to imagination, invisible meanings beneath visible things, and the power of poetry to make them visible to others. Valente proves to be a gentle guide for the gentle reader by inviting us into spaces we don’t expect to go: a newborn infant’s consciousness, Li Po’s wine cup, Thomas Merton’s hermitage, the dreams of a drowning child, a geriatric couple’s ritual of love in a Spoleto gelateria– and finding in those (extra)ordinary places grace after grace after grace.
–Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of Holy Land, Love in the Time of Coronavirus, Dear Dante, and Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor
In this season of anger and betrayal of reason, Judith Valente’s poems dare me to hope. With concentration on the senses and her deep comprehension of contemplation–silence, humility, respect for both friend and stranger, restraint in all things but joy–she has taken me on an inward journey to calm. Embracing “sweetness and bitterness alike,” these poems are inviting but they are not soft. Could any image be more complex than her invocation of “tiny shrapnels of light?” Could anyone else’s travel down the produce aisle yield a more delightful (and astute) observation than hers, that only a God with a sense of humor could have invented the Brussels sprout? This book is a quiet shout of consolation, a call to reason, a balm.
–Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After, Cora Fry’s Pillow Book, and The Lake on Fire
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Judith Valente’s chapbook Inventing an Alphabet was selected by Mary Oliver for the 2005 national Aldrich Poetry Prize. It was followed by her full-length collection, Discovering Moons, in 2009, published by Virtual Artists Collective/Chicago.
Along with Charles Reynard, Judith is co-editor of Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul, an anthology of poems and reflections. She is the author of five nonfiction books, including the memoir Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith and How to Live; and co-author of How to Be and The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked and Overwhelmed, a collection of haiku and short meditations.
Judith is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and on-air correspondent for national PBS-TV and two National Public Radio affiliates in Illinois. She was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism and has won numerous awards for her journalism, poetry, and nonfiction writing. She is a sought-after speaker who frequently leads retreats on how to live a more contemplative life in the secular world and guides the annual “Benedictine Footprints” contemplative, cultural and culinary retreat/pilgrimage to lesser-known parts of Italy.
FROM THE BOOK:
How to Be a Contemplative
by Judith Valente
Find a window. Sit by it.
Stare at the flower box of cosmos,
the bees that kiss the blooms and move on.
Sit, not for just two minutes,
but linger there. Waste time.
Forget the laundry, the grocery list,
the buzzing phone, the writing that waits.
Imagine sitting on a shoreline
listening to the endless rumor of the sea.
Imagine rising and falling like the tide.
Our mistakes are doors, our successes
melt quickly on the tongue.
The face you soon will see in the mirror
is the face of every person you’ve ever met.
It opens like a book of singular stories
unfolding, encompassing everything:
the bee stings, birdsong, night sweats,
sunrises, sunsets, discoveries, losses.
All of it good, all of it a placeholder for meaning.
Then listen for the one word you yearn to hear,
the voice that calls you by name, that calls you Beloved.
For Reflection:
Wendell Berry's poem "How to Be a Poet" is one I have long admired. I often begin with it at poetry writing workshops. For many years now, I've been a student of the contemplative way of life, having spent considerable time in Benedictine, Trappist, and Camaldolese monasteries where prayer is the main form of activity and silence the preferred language. I've learned that living a more contemplative life doesn't consist of grand gestures or some dramatic experience of instant conversion. It is a slow process of repeated, small daily steps that ultimately marks the soul, like water etching into stone. The poem is not so much a prescription as an intimation of how to be. What lines would you add if asked how to be a contemplative?
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