Publishing The Love that Moves the Sun and Other Stars

If you follow me on any of my social media, you will already know this exciting news. But for those who don’t, The Love that Moves the Sun and Other Stars is being published by Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. I’ve read through the proofs, made “all” the corrections (I hope) and it is now in the hands of some excellent people to read and, if they like it, write blurbs for it.

This has been a rough year for me, so it is helpful to have another book baby making its way into the world. Writing has long been a passion of mine. I can still remember hiding in my fort in the backyard writing stories. Writing helps me, and hopefully it helps you, my readers, as well. This book is a particularly important one for me. Dante has been an important writer for me. Reading him in the UK for the first time set me on the path I’m on today. In fact, I got my first full-time, classical school teaching position in part by teaching a section of the Inferno to group of high school sophomores. In many ways this book is a culmination of the work I’ve been doing for the last 12 years.

Each poem is written in terza rima, the rhyme scheme Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in. Though, unlike Dante, my poems are only 10 lines each, as opposed to well over a hundred. My poems are meant to serve as a reflection on Dante’s poems, not, necessarily, a commentary. I try to take a theme or phrase or concept that appears in each canto and explore it in my own voice. My hope is that lovers of Dante’s poem will find allusions and references in mine that will spark deeper reflection. I also hope, however, that those who have not read Dante will still find my poems worth reading, and maybe even inspire them to read Dante for themselves.

I’ll be keeping you updated as things like blurbs and the book cover come in, but in the meantime, to whet your appetite, here are the first poems of each section.

“The Dark Wood”
Inferno Canto 1

And I have also lost the mountain path
And fallen in the forest dark and grim,
Enduring what so often feels like wrath

But is just Love that’s boiling over the brim.
Falling off the Mountain of Delight,
The Sun still rising and not yet growing dim,

My sinner’s eyes are blinded by its Light.
So I must find another path to tread,
A path of hellish darkness and of fright,

Yet one that will bring life back to the dead.

“The Antipodes”
Purgatorio Canto 1

Rising up, I find a different way
With many different stars that shine to guide me,
So bind me with the reed and wash my face.

Like Venus, I ascend out of the sea,
Ready to be rid of that hellish hollow,
Ready to find the Love I could not see.

This is the path of Love that I must follow,
The mountain path that will at last leave me purged,
So I may ascend still higher like a swallow

Following that divine and holy urge.

“The Celestial Heavens”
Paradiso Canto 1

All things enjoy a kindly inclination
To return to their true source and home,
And I can journey home with Christ’s salvation.

O True Sun, you burn away the gloam,
And by your Light you draw me further in
And further up, into and beyond the dome,

The spheres that radiate your Light and spin.
It was my will that drew me down to nothing,
My will that kept me trapped inside my sin,

But turn my will to you and I rise to being.