Lovers' Almanac

Lovers' Almanac is a collection of poems that explores the varieties of love that human beings experience. Anchoring the volume is a 12-poem sonnet sequence featuring an intimate dialogue between a man and woman, each poem keyed to one of the months of the year. The book offers a range of poems engaging divine love, agapeic love, familial love, fraternal love, parental love, and homage, the love we bear towards artists, saints, and heroes. As the title implies, Lovers' Almanac also explores the concept of time and the ways in which love is grounded in the succession of seasons--both the seasons of the year and the seasons of life. These incarnational poems devote attention to embodied, incarnate love, evident in all times and places, and celebrate the power of love to open us up, save us from the prison house of self, and redeem us from the suffering human beings are heir to. Love accompanies us throughout the course of human life, from birth to death, defying loss, loneliness, aging, and our inevitable mortality. The premise of the book might be summed up by one of its epigraphs, echoing St. Paul: "Love never fails."