For Scott Cairns, a poem is not so much a means of expression as it is a way of discovery. It is not so much a document of past experience as it is an occasion for new experience, and the construction of a scene in which the collisions of words and their provocative, generative energies bring about new matter and new vision.

Spanning thirty years and including selections from four of his previous five collections, Compass of Affection further enacts the poet’s longstanding engagement with language as revelation, and his insistence that poetry be understood less as an expression of what is already known, and more as a way of knowing. Observing these further developments, one comes to suspect that Cairns’ poems are no longer to be understood as discussions of theology, but as theology performed.

Praise for Scott Cairns’ work

“Scott Cairns is perhaps the most important and promising religious poet of his generation.”

—Prairie Schooner

“The voice of Cairns is conversational and coaxing—confiding in us secrets that seem to be our own.” —Publishers Weekly

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ISBN: 9781557255037
Catalogue code: N/A
Publisher: PARACLETE PRESS - published 15/09/2006
Format: Hardback