{"title":"Robert Cording","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"finding-the-worlds-fullness-hardcover","title":"Finding the World's Fullness - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForty years as a poet has kept Robert Cording looking at the details of everyday experience. That long labor has brought him face-to-face with the inescapable complexity of a world that is full of suffering and injustice. And grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis journey has convinced him that, as Czeslaw Milosz puts it, \"\"poetry embodies the double life of our common human circumstance as beings in between the dust that we are and the divinity to which we would aspire.\"\" Cording's task has therefore been to evoke what he calls \"\"the primordial intuitions of Christianity\"\" that we live in a world we did not create; that God's immanent presence is capable of breaking in on us at every moment; that most of the time we cannot \"\"taste and see\"\" that presence because we live in a world of mirrors; that only by attention can we live in the world but outside of our existing conceptions of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe reflections in Finding the World's Fullness--comprising not only thoughts on metaphor but also close readings of poets ancient and modern, including George Herbert, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Bishop, and Stanley Kunitz--suggest that, as Richard Wilbur puts it, \"\"The world's fullness is not made but found.\"\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376683876575,"sku":"9781639820252","price":35.1,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/skizCJkacJ9781639820252.webp?v=1789221686"},{"product_id":"finding-the-worlds-fullness-paperback","title":"Finding the World's Fullness - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForty years as a poet has kept Robert Cording looking at the details of everyday experience. That long labor has brought him face-to-face with the inescapable complexity of a world that is full of suffering and injustice. And grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis journey has convinced him that, as Czeslaw Milosz puts it, \"\"poetry embodies the double life of our common human circumstance as beings in between the dust that we are and the divinity to which we would aspire.\"\" Cording's task has therefore been to evoke what he calls \"\"the primordial intuitions of Christianity\"\" that we live in a world we did not create; that God's immanent presence is capable of breaking in on us at every moment; that most of the time we cannot \"\"taste and see\"\" that presence because we live in a world of mirrors; that only by attention can we live in the world but outside of our existing conceptions of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe reflections in Finding the World's Fullness--comprising not only thoughts on metaphor but also close readings of poets ancient and modern, including George Herbert, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Bishop, and Stanley Kunitz--suggest that, as Richard Wilbur puts it, \"\"The world's fullness is not made but found.\"\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376707272927,"sku":"9781639820245","price":19.44,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/wVu7zOKbC99781639820245.webp?v=1789221746"},{"product_id":"in-the-unwalled-city-paperback","title":"In the Unwalled City - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn the Unwalled City\u003c\/em\u003e takes its title from Epicurus, who wrote: \"Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city.\" This affecting book-which weaves prose memoir with poetry-explores that feeling of being open to attack-in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording's thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, here is \"a grief observed,\" encompassing not only the big questions but also the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief takes is that of speaking to his son. In \"Afterlife,\" Cording has a vision of his son replying: \"let the emptiness remain empty . . . Stop writing down \/ everything you think I'm telling you. \/ This is your afterlife, not mine.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the heart of \u003cem\u003eIn the Unwalled City \u003c\/em\u003eis a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one chart a new life that both acknowledges a son's death and still finds a way back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city? \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378313593055,"sku":"9781639821143","price":18.36,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/w9p2LvurMl9781639821143.webp?v=1789254374"},{"product_id":"whats-possible-new-selected-poems-paperback","title":"What's Possible: New \u0026 Selected Poems - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eW.H. Auden said about poetry: \"there is only one thing \/ that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being \/ and for happening.\" For forty years, Robert Cording's poems have sought to praise a world that need not be, but is. His poems embrace what cannot be changed: that living brings us face-to-face with suffering and injustice, beauty and grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the start, his work has explored three questions: Why does it feel that life is \"good,\" even in the face of so much suffering and grief? How can he be grateful for what he has been given despite the almost daily onslaught of affliction and sorrow in the world? How, finally, can he not only embrace, but praise the opposing sides of \u003cem\u003ewhat's possible\u003c\/em\u003e: the utter grief and utter joy of being alive?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the words of poet Eamon Grennan, Cording is always \"transforming his naturalist's scrutiny of the world into moral interrogation, bringing to our attention, in poem after poem, 'the strangeness we were born to.'\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat's Possible: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e makes clear what many have long known: that Robert Cording is among his generation's finest poets, and that his work has been both deeply consistent and yet constantly evolving. Here is a poet both unsparing and generous, a voice that has always heeded Shakespeare's injunction to \"speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378767102175,"sku":"9781639822232","price":25.92,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/5cimRsraXf9781639822232.webp?v=1789261686"},{"product_id":"whats-possible-new-selected-poems-hardcover","title":"What's Possible: New \u0026 Selected Poems - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eW.H. Auden said about poetry: \"there is only one thing \/ that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being \/ and for happening.\" For forty years, Robert Cording's poems have sought to praise a world that need not be, but is. His poems embrace what cannot be changed: that living brings us face-to-face with suffering and injustice, beauty and grace. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the start, his work has explored three questions: Why does it feel that life is \"good,\" even in the face of so much suffering and grief? How can he be grateful for what he has been given despite the almost daily onslaught of affliction and sorrow in the world? How, finally, can he not only embrace, but praise the opposing sides of \u003cem\u003ewhat's possible\u003c\/em\u003e: the utter grief and utter joy of being alive?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the words of poet Eamon Grennan, Cording is always \"transforming his naturalist's scrutiny of the world into moral interrogation, bringing to our attention, in poem after poem, 'the strangeness we were born to.'\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat's Possible: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e makes clear what many have long known: that Robert Cording is among his generation's finest poets, and that his work has been both deeply consistent and yet constantly evolving. Here is a poet both unsparing and generous, a voice that has always heeded Shakespeare's injunction to \"speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378767691999,"sku":"9781639822249","price":42.12,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/IENlWODXVm9781639822249.webp?v=1789261687"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/robert-cording.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}