Angel's Task: Poems in Biblical Time [Paperback]

Laurie Patton's Poems in Biblical Time give contemplative voice to the reading cycle of the Jewish year. Replete with ancient imagery coming alive in the language of the present, each poem weaves scripture into everyday life while refocusing a single Biblical moment. In her vision here, angels are also messengers sent to earth with a single piece of work to accomplish. Although we are of so many minds burdened with so many tasks, as readers we again receive messengers and the messages they bring. Recognition may come in the angelic voice, and we can meet angels and ourselves at the tent door in the heat of the day. Angel's Task urges continuous awe-or trembling.

Laurie L. Patton is author or editor of nine books on religion, mythology, and literature. Her most recent books of poems are Angel's Task: Poems in Biblical Time  (Station Hill) and Fire’s Goal: Poems from the Hindu Year, which was named a Publisher’s Weekly Pick of the Month in 2003. She has also translated the Bhagavad Gita for the Penguin Press Classics Series (2008). She has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Foundation in Israel, the Fulbright Foundation in India, and the Goldwasser Fund for Religion and the Arts. The former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University, she is currently President of Middlebury College.