The Sacred Place
Witnessing the Holy in the Physical World

Edited by W. Scott Olsen and Scott Cairn

6 x 9, 352 pp.
Paper $19.95
978-0-87480-524-6
Literature

Some of today's most significant writers and poets explore the relation between what we call the sacred and what we witness in the apparent world.

This unprecedented anthology brings together a provocative mix of new and well known writers whose poetry and prose broaches the possibility of something “bigger” going on, something more significant at stake. Is some powerful agency at work in what we see or are we just wishing (or fearing) that there were? Who can say? Who would dare? What’s most intriguing about the selections in this volume is that the authors do dare. What’s most attractive about them is that they resist answering that dare with reductions. They prefer the swoon of multiple possibilities over the relative comfort of conclusions. Various as they are, the works collected in The Sacred Place share a common reverence for the word itself, and perhaps best of all—they share a common understanding that no one of them comprehends fully what that means. They seem to desire instead a sense that the humble stuff surrounding us affords a likely enough habitation for the sacred, even now.

Contributors
David Baker
Rick Bass
Wendy Battin
David Bengtson
Carol Bly
David Bottoms
Douglas Burton-Christie
Edward Byrene
Douglas Carlson
Kelly Cherry
Richard Chess
Katherine Coles
Annie Dillard
Helen Frost
Diane Glancy
Jorie Graham
Alvin Greenberg
Paul Gruchow
Cathryn Hankla
Charles I. Hartman
Linda Hasselstrom
David Hope
William Kittredge
Sydney Lea
Desnise Levertov
Barry Lott
Dawn Marano
Katherine McNamara
John McPhee
Michael Mott
Kathleen Norris
Naomi Shihab Nye
Scott Russell Sanders
Reg Saner
Lynda Sexson
Beth Simon
Janer Sylvester
Ann Townsend
Ingrid Wendt
Richard Wilbur
Terry Tempest Williams
Charles Wright