The Parthenon (Paperback or Softback)

The twenty-seven poems in this collection were written over a period of many years. They vary greatly in style and length.
The poems in the first two sections are lyrical. Natural beauty evokes wonder and tugs at memory. Creatures dance and sing. There is joy. The last poem in Part II, “The Generations,” shifts tone abruptly. There is conflict and loss. In the end, with the dolphins, beauty renews hope. “The Generations” is a bridge to the complex narrative poems and dramatic lyrics in Part III.
Here the tragic is displayed, but also the divine power that redeems it. Part IV plunges into our modern abyss. The poems are an anguished cry from the heart of the fog enveloping our civilization. The long poem, “The Fog,” evokes the plight of lost and lonely individuals tending their private campfires in the night of the world, cut off from transcendence and marooned in the abstract unreality of the digital universe. Part V carries forward this momentum, referencing the genocidal violence of our age, but then moves from darkness and horror up into the light of revelation and peace.

George Hobson is an Episcopal priest and Canon to the Bishop for Theological Education in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. He has taught theology in seminaries and theological colleges in many developing countries, including Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, Armenia, and Pakistan. He is author of a volume of poems and photographs, Rumours of Hope (2005), and contributor to a collective book of poetry, Forgotten Genocides of the Twentieth Century (2005).