In the dark before dawn : new selected poems of Thomas Merton

From the Publisher: A new view of the innovative poetry by the late, great Trappist monk and religious philosopher.;Preface -- Introduction -- 1: Geography's landscapes -- Night train -- Aubade: Lake Erie -- Ohio River: Louisville -- Aubade: Harlem -- Hymn of not much praise for New York City -- Figures for an apocalypse -- In the ruins of New York -- Landscape: beast -- Heavenly city -- Christopher Columbus -- Guns of Fort Knox -- Darjeeling -- Songs of experience: India, one -- 2: Poems From The Monastery -- Holy Communion: the city -- Trappist Abbey: matins -- Blessed Virgin compared to a window -- How long we wait -- Letter to my friends -- Trappists, working -- After the night office: Gethsemani Abbey -- Trappist Cemetery: Gethsemani -- Poem in the rain and the sun -- Spring: monastery farm -- Reader -- On a day in August -- Elegy for the monastery barn -- Solitary life -- Elegy for a Trappist -- Merlin and the deer -- Old monk is turned loose -- Practical program for monks -- 3: Poems Of The Sacred -- Song -- Sacred Heart 2 -- Winter's night -- Vine -- Biography -- Advent -- Carol -- Ash Wednesday -- On the anniversary of my baptism -- Theory of prayer -- Senescente mundo -- Early mass -- Hagia Sophia -- Night of destiny -- [Untitled] -- 4: Songs Of Contemplation -- Evening -- Song for our Lady of Cobre -- Two states of prayer -- Evening: zero weather -- Sowing of meanings -- Psalm -- Elias: variations on a theme -- In silence -- Stranger -- Grace's house -- Song for nobody -- Song: if you seek -- O sweet irrational worship -- Night-flowering cactus -- Love winter when the plant says nothing -- Song: contemplation -- Joy of fishes -- 5: History's Voices: Past And Present -- Dirge for the world Joyce died in -- In memory of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca -- Elegy for Ernest Hemingway -- Elegy for James Thurber -- Rilke's epitaph -- Message to be inscribed on Mark Van Doren's Hamilton Medal -- Two British airmen -- Original child bomb -- Paper cranes -- Chant to be used in processions around a site with furnaces -- Epitaph for a public servant -- Picture of Lee Ying -- Children of Birmingham -- Picture of a black child with a white doll -- April 4th 1968 -- Seneca -- Origen -- Fall '66 -- 6: Engaging The World -- Philosophers -- Tower of Babel -- Letter to America -- from Cables to the ace -- from Geography of Lograire: South I -- South III-hymns of Lograire -- North: prologue: why I have a wet footprint on top of my mind -- West I: day six O'Hare Telephane -- West III: Ghost Dance: prologue -- Originators -- Readings from Ibn Abbad (5, 7) -- Man of Tao -- Turtle -- Where is Tao? -- 7: On Being Human -- For my brother: reported missing in action, 1943 -- Freedom as experience -- Whether there is enjoyment in bitterness -- Fall -- Carol -- Antipoem 1 -- With the world in my blood stream -- Untitled poem -- I always obey my nurse -- Louisville Airport -- May song -- Aubade on a cloudy morning -- Never call a babysitter in a thunderstorm -- Cherokee Park -- Evening: long distance call -- Cancer blues -- Six night letters -- For M In October -- For M on a cold grey morning -- 8: Merton And Other Languages -- Le secret (Thomas Merton) / Riddle (translation, Br Paul Quenon) -- Je crois en l'amour (Thomas Merton)/ I believe in love (translation, Br Paul Quenon) -- Three epigrams / Ernesto Cardenal -- When the shoe fits / Chuang Tzu -- Birth of the sun / Pablo Antonio Cuadra -- Two palm trees / Miguel Hernandez -- Chagall / Raissa Maritain -- Black stone on top of a white stone / Cesar Vallejo -- Butterfly / Nicanor Parra -- Poetry ends with me / Nicanor Parra -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index of titles and first lines. A new, broad, comprehensive view of the innovative poetry of the late, great Trappist monk and religious philosopher Thomas Merton. Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social criticthe late Thomas Merton was all these things. Until now, no selection from his great body of poetry has afforded a comprehensive view of his varied and largely innovative work. In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton is not only double the size of Merton's earlier Selected Poems (1967), it also arranges his poetry thematically and chronologically, so that readers can follow the poet's multifarious interrelated lines of thought as well as his poetic development over the decades, from his college days in the 1930s to his untimely accidental death in Bangkok in 1968 during his personal Eastern pilgrimage. The selections are grouped under eight thematic headings"Geography's Landscapes," "Poems from the Monastery," "Poems of the Sacred," "Songs of Contemplation," "History's Voices: Past and Present," "Engaging the World," "On Being Human," "Merton and Other Languages."