Ethan Lewis, dubbed “Poet laureate of Hawthorne Place,” writes daily, stopped only perhaps by night time: “But then again, bed beckons: ‘It is time. / You satisfied exigencies of rhyme.’” Doesn’t he declare, “Pentameter helps pass the time”? Maybe it is a way for him to keep away, at least for a while, “our fate: to disappear”; and does he know how to cry for a departed friend: “Our loss. Your gentle soul and kindest life.” Ethan Lewis does not ignore what he owe...

The poems in this collection arise from the vivid awareness that we are immersed in mystery. Dwelling in the shadow of Gabriel’s wing, we are called to embrace the plenitude of miracle and melancholy that weave our lives. The cover painting of Caspar David Friedrich intimates this spirit: two gazes—a man’s and a woman’s—contemplate and converge in a vision beyond themselves. A vast sky canopies a somber forest: at the penumbral verge of luminous and tenebrous realms, their surrender...

'Vogt is striving to return to the “primitive rule” of scholarship, which stresses canonicity, esthetic and humanistic values, historical grounding, and adherence to text. Vogt’s “Critical Introduction” places Saint Teresa’s work in the political, historical, and religious context of Golden Age Spain, where faith permeated every aspect of life. He humanizes his subject by stressing her earthiness— for example, her fondness for music and cooking—as well as her political savvy a...

'Was it an intuition that made me select -- I think at the beginning of my adolescence – a form of approach to life linked to English literature through Shakespeare? And can one talk in this case of literature? I think not, I think that even though it was made concrete in a regular reading of the Stratford genius in the middle of the night, it had to do with a study of the possibilities of the human soul and the different models offered us. I would identify with male and female characters, ...

'This book of poems is essentially cabalistic or pseudo-cabalistic, but not because it is in some way mystical, esoteric or secretive, but because it is numerical. At least it deals with a cipher of deep significance: number six (6). Kabbalah comprises a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain through symbols and numbers in most cases the relationship between God and the mortal and finite universe, which, ultimately, is God's creation. Here the poems aim to show in a tone of denouncement t...