God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God

by Thomas W. Mann

Overview

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, Mary Oliver has published twelve books of poetry and five books of essays. Her poems are quoted in everything from Web sites to hymn books. Earthlight, a “Magazine of Spiritual Ecology,” has declared her an “earth saint.”

In this engaging study, Mann shows Oliver to have keen eyes and ears for reading the book of nature. Readers will discover that the correspondence between Oliver’s poetry and traditional religious language provides a fresh perspective from which to enjoy her work. Here there is a god, but one who at first seems unrecognizable, at least to Judeo-Christian religious tradition. We know of the “God of heaven,” and even the “God of heaven and earth,” but a god of dirt?

Oliver’s reading of the Other Book of God invites us into nature’s “temple” where we may come into the presence of the holy and from which we may leave rejuvenated and blessed. God of Dirt is an important study of a contemporary poet whose work is as likely to be read by a preacher in a pulpit as by an activist at an environmental rally, and will help us experience a new vision of the beauty of our world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781561012619
Publisher:	Cowley Publications
Publication date:	06/25/2004
Pages:	77
Product dimensions:	5.62(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

THOMAS W. MANN has been minister of Parkway United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem, NC for twenty years, and has taught religion and Old Testament at Wake Forest University, Salem College, Converse College, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books including The Book of Torah: The Narrative Integrity of the Pentateuch (1988) and Deuteronomy (Westminster Bible Companion, 1995).

What People are Saying About This

Mary Oliver

I feel very honored by this book and am made happy by it, as Thomas Mann has expressed so well what I have been about these last decades.

Editorial Reviews

I feel very honored by this book and am made happy by it, as Thomas Mann has expressed so well what I have been about these last decades.

Mary Oliver

His insight is keen.. .. Mann does not shy from going with Oliver into nature’s apparent cruelty—what we humans, by our morals, consider cruelty, that is—by which so much of the animal world survives.. .. Drawing our attention to the violence and to God forces the reader to contemplate God’s role in our world and our role in God’s.

Winston-Salem Journal - Beth Woodward

His insight is keen. . . . Mann does not shy from going with Oliver into nature's apparent cruelty--what we humans, by our morals, consider cruelty, that is--by which so much of the animal world survives. . . . Drawing our attention to the violence and to God forces the reader to contemplate God's role in our world and our role in God's.--Beth Woodward "Winston-Salem Journal"

I feel very honored by this book and am made happy by it, as Thomas Mann has expressed so well what I have been about these last decades.--Mary Oliver

From the Publisher

His insight is keen. . . . Mann does not shy from going with Oliver into nature’s apparent cruelty—what we humans, by our morals, consider cruelty, that is—by which so much of the animal world survives. . . . Drawing our attention to the violence and to God forces the reader to contemplate God’s role in our world and our role in God’s.

Winston-Salem Journal - Beth Woodard

His insight is keen. . . . Mann does not shy from going with Oliver into nature’s apparent cruelty—what we humans, by our morals, consider cruelty, that is—by which so much of the animal world survives. . . . Drawing our attention to the violence and to God forces the reader to contemplate God’s role in our world and our role in God’s.
— Beth Woodard

Winston-Salem Journal