Faces of Memory - Softcover

Hobson, George

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798385214501

Publisher: Resource Publications, 2024

Synopsis

Read together, the three long poems in this book constitute a kind of epic. In the manner of a cubist painting, they present, through the medium of memory, the complex portrait of a man, the poet. The poems are dramatic narratives, each providing a distinctive perspective on, and poetic us of, memory. The poet is a Christian, and the poems, which range across relationships and places he has known, evoke a life lived in faith and hope. The Bells of Swettl uses the framework of the monastic offices to dramatize and universalize the movement of a life through time; The Psaltery is a meditation, studded with stories, on life’s meaning in the face of passing time and death; and, in fifteen poems, The Trinity Suites evokes an array of characters and remembered experiences that explore, in a harsh world, the possibility of live and redemption. Themes such as the relationship of son to father and mother, the love of husband and wife, the tension between city and wilderness, the sorrow of loss, the horror of violence, weave through the poems. Throughout, differently in each poem, memory is deployed as the vehicle to structure the past and intimate a possible future, thus giving order to human life.

About this title

About the Author

George Hobson is a priest in the Episcopal/Anglican Church. He has lived in France for over half his life, working with both French and English-speaking churches. He studied theology at Oxford in the 1980s and earned his doctorate in 1989. From 1995 to 2000 he held the post of Canon Pastor at the American Cathedral in Paris. With his wife Victoria he has travelled extensively in developing countries, notably Rwanda, Haiti, Pakistan, and Armenia, teaching courses in theological colleges. His first book of poetry, illustrated with his own art photographs, was published in England in 2005. Since then, with Wipf and Stock, he has published two books of theological/social analysis and four volumes of poetry: The Parthenon, May Day Morning in Yerevan, Heights and Depths, and A Far Country Here. His poem Sun Patch won Second Prize in the International Bridport Poetry Competition in 1995.

Edition details

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798385214501
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 182