Years, Months, and Days
CBC Books | | Posted: April 9, 2019 4:51 PM | Last Updated: April 9, 2019
Amanda Jernigan
A transfiguration of Mennonite hymns into heartbreaking lyric poems, Years, Months, and Days is a moving "meditation on the possibility of translation." Bridging secular spirituality and holy reverence with the commonalities of life, death, love and hope, Jernigan explores the connection between hymn and poem, recalling the spare beauty of Marilynne Robinson's novels or the poems of Jan Zwicky and Robert Bringhurst. The sparse and tender phrasing of Years, Months, and Days is "an offering of words to music," made in the spirit of a shared love — for life, for a particular landscape and its rhythms — that animates poem and prayer alike. (From Biblioasis)
From the book
O you who know my will
but do not understand it
and must be driven still
in restlessness, or stranded,
your soul will not be still
until you are resigned
how gentle is your friend
and kind.
but do not understand it
and must be driven still
in restlessness, or stranded,
your soul will not be still
until you are resigned
how gentle is your friend
and kind.
I can see the place,
near to me as you are,
clearly as your face,
but I cannot go there.
near to me as you are,
clearly as your face,
but I cannot go there.
you see I've come
so very far
from nothingness
that now I can
not see it for
so very far
from nothingness
that now I can
not see it for
From Prologue in Years, Months, and Days by Amanda Jernigan ©2017. Published by Biblioasis.