Still Pilgrim is a collection of poems that chronicles the universal journey of life as seen through the eyes of a keenly-observant friend and fellow traveler. The reader accompanies the Still Pilgrim as she navigates the experiences that constitute her private history yet also serve to remind us of our own moments of enlightenment, epiphany, and encounter with mystery. Each of the 58 poems of the collection marks a way station along the pilgrimage, a kind of holy well where the Pilgrim and reader might stop and draw knowledge, solace, joy, and the strength to continue along the path.
At the center of this spiritual travel book lies a paradox: the Pilgrim's desire for the gift of stillness amid the flux and flow of time, change, and circumstance. “Be still and know that I am God,” sings the Psalmist, channeling the voice of the divine. “Teach us to care and not care. Teach us to sit still,” prays the poet, T.S. Eliot. Still Pilgrim depicts and embodies this human dilemma—our inevitable movement through time, moment by moment, day by day, and the power of art to stop both time and our forward march, to capture the present moment so we might savor the flavor of life.
Product Preview
| Format: | Paperback book |
|---|---|
| Product code: | PP8647 |
| Dimensions: | 5½" x 8½" |
| Length: | 128 pages |
| Publisher: |
Paraclete Press
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| ISBN: | 9781612618647 |
| 1-2 copies | $18.48 each |
|---|---|
| 3-9 copies | $17.64 each |
| 10-49 copies | $16.80 each |
| 50-99 copies | $16.38 each |
| 100+ copies | $15.75 each |
Praise
In Angela O’Donnell’s collection Still Pilgrim, we find poetic discipline wedded to discipleship, as handmaid to the exigencies of love. . . .O’Donnell reminds us that, while we are all in constant motion, ‘hurtling through the universe,’ we travel best by gravitating toward the stillness of belonging, attuned not only to who we are, but also, more importantly, for whom and in whom we are. Still Pilgrim speaks, sacredly, of this outward/inward journey where to seek ourselves is to empty our self into the hands of the Beloved.
I am amazed and awestruck by Angela Alaima O’Donnell’s Still Pilgrim. Her choice of form, the sonnet sequence, is a sign of her devotion to the best and most valuable of the highest literary tradition of the past. Alongside this fidelity, she makes the daring move of including what has been considered undesirable subject matter for contemporary writers: the ordinary lived life of women, and the ardor and anguish of a religious life. Still Pilgrim insists that there is a place for a mother’s garters and the Beatitudes, that the arrows that pierced St. Theresa’s bowels are the very same that pierce the new mother’s heart as she holds her child. Still Pilgrim is a remarkable achievement.
Still Pilgrim is a collection of poems that chronicles the journey of life as seen through the eyes of a keenly-observant friend and fellow traveler. The reader accompanies the Still Pilgrim as she maps universal terrain, navigating the experiences that constitute her private history yet also serve to remind the reader of his or her own moments of enlightenment, epiphany, and encounter with mystery. Each of the 58 poems of the collection marks a way station along the pilgrimage where the Pilgrim and reader might pause and ponder before continuing with the inevitable march forward.
If rhyme and meter are, as Heaney said, the table manners of the language arts, then Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has set out a sumptuous feast, if not bardic, then beatific, recalling a time when pilgrims knew to spread good word by heart.
Thomas Lynch, author of Walking Papers and The Sin-eater: A Breviary
