Dana Gioia

Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dogma speaks to our intellects and erects the boundaries of understanding expressed in the Nicene Creed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Poetry, a much more ancient religious language, speaks to us in delight, the experience of beauty and is capable of touching us very deeply. Why should we meditate on the poetry of the great Catholic poets in prayer and adoration? So that we might overcome the inertia that hampers our ascent to the Father.

Poems discussed by Dana Gioia are "The Burning Ladder" and "The Seven Sins" by Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. " “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”

Readings for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091822.cfm

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Gerard Manley Hopkins, self-portrait

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Suggested Readings

99 Poems: New & Selected Paperback – April 4, 2017

So much of what we live goes on inside―
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.
―from “Unsaid”

Dana Gioia has long been celebrated as a poet of sharp intelligence and brooding emotion with an ingenious command of his craft. 99 Poems: New & Selected gathers for the first time work from across his career, including many remarkable new poems. Gioia has not arranged this selection chronologically but instead has organized it by theme in seven sections: Mystery, Place, Remembrance, Imagination, Stories, Songs, and Love. The result is a book that reveals and renews the pleasures, consolations, and sense of wonder that poetry bestows.
 

Hopkins: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) Hardcover – October 31, 1995

"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells..."
These Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover editions are popular for their compact size and reasonable price which do not compromise content. Poems: Hopkins contains a full selection of Hopkins's work, including selected verse, prose, and letters, and an index of first lines.