Description
Poetry. The third full-length collection from poet-scholar-activist David Brazil, Holy Ghost is a hymnal with secular burdens, poured from the mold of our actual life in common, sung against its limits. It seeks a way to find and build a soul together, and records the seekers' findings along the way, proposing love as our common human denominator. A record of the author's struggle to forge a relationship between two distinct vocations-one historical, as an activist (with Occupy Oakland, among other projects), and one spiritual, as he explores the path of radical Christian discipleship (in his life as a pastor)-Holy Ghost attempts to articulate an understanding of where class struggle meets the will of God.
"'When time is the instrument, grace is the measure,' writes David Brazil, in this dazzling book of 'earthly liturgy.' These poems of glorification, joyful and solemn, speak to the erasure of the boundary between mrtam/amrtam (death/non-death) and recall Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience as well as Robert Duncan's Heavenly City Earthly City. With clarity and infinite finesse, the rhythms and tensile swing of Brazil's writing direct hymn's availability, from today's idiomatic speech to a yesteryear of sermon and rune. Every note counts."—Norma Cole
Author Bio
David Brazil is a pastor, poet, and community organizer. He is the author of HOLY GHOST (City Lights, 2017), ANTISOCIAL PATIENCE (Roof, 2015), and The Ordinary (Compline, 2013). He lives in New Orleans.
Author City: NEW ORLEANS, LA USA