A Slender Grace

A Slender Grace is Rod Jellema's first collection of poetry since his highly praised The Eighth Day appeared almost twenty years ago. In this volume, which consists of 67 poems, almost all of them new, Jellema confronts a culture that loves bigness with poems that notice what is slender -- the thin lines, the threads by which some things hang, the narrow crevices through which divine grace offers to reconcile humans to each other and to the Creator.

These beautifully crafted pieces are not "religious poems" in the usual sense. As Jellema explains, "These poems individually are not spiritual message-bearers. Still, it is inevitable that my belief in a beautiful world that is broken and divinely redeemed -- though I am not preaching about it -- should be evident throughout." And it is, as Jellema takes a second, deeper look at such things as green beans in all their glory, a lovesick lonely young man in a Laundromat, and his own sense of the world while snorkeling in the Red Sea.

Rod Jellema (1927–2018) was a poet and professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, where he founded and directed the creative writing program. His work won multiple honors including the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Award and the Columbia University Translation Prize. His poetry collections include Incarnality, The Eighth Day, and A Slender Grace.