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"We are wide-eyed for hard-won wisdom. We are wide-eyed for epiphanies of beauty."
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Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy that find redemption in uncanny places and people; wrestle us from the tyranny of noise and rescue us from the republic of boredom; articulate faith and doubt in their incarnate complexity; and render well this world's countless sublimities and sufferings without forfeiting hope—all of this with an unflinching gaze, wide-eyed. [read more HERE]
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New Release
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Hold Fast
Spencer K.M. Brown A moving and tender story of a father and son on the Minnesota shores of Lake Superior, Hold Fast is a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of healing amid life’s chaos. Jude Algonquin, a former collegiate rowing star, and his father Thom, a plow-truck driver, live a strange “half-life.” Once earmarked for gold medals and signed onto the Olympic rowing team, Jude has returned to Minnesota to recover from a disqualifying accident. “Hiding out” from the world, Jude works as a dishwasher, trying to navigate an alienated life while coming to grips with his lost dreams and burning love for his high school girlfriend, Emily. . . . [read more HERE] “There is a refreshing straightforwardness in the quiet, solid beauty of this book. Something like a pared down James Agee.”—Mesha Maren, best-selling author of Sugar Run and Perpetual West “Part adventure story, part love story, Hold Fast is the thrilling tale of a father and son who have learned to live with regret but refuse to give up on life. You will never forget these characters or their journey. An intimate look at the trouble we make and the trouble that finds us.”—David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals |
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One Hundred Visions of War
Julien Vocance | Translated by Alfred Nicol | Preface by Dana Gioia The “One Hundred Visions of War” of Julien Vocance (1878-1954) comprise some of the first haiku written in the West. Where classical Japanese haiku traditionally speaks of the beauty of Nature, Vocance uses the form to a very different purpose, depicting the horror and brutality of armed conflict, as seen from the trenches during the First World War. Readers get a ground-level view of unimaginable slaughter. The value of Vocance’s poetry lies in its witness to the experience of the human being caught up in a battle which, as Wendell Berry put it, “the machines won.” Only imagine: an obscure soldier-poet pits his human art against overwhelming military technology, and his art survives. “Like Ungaretti and Apollinaire, Julien Vocance faced the instant karma of the First World War with outcries of visionary perception. Each flash of the battlefield, each haiku, is a compelling ode to what can go away in a second, and to what remains, even amid annihilation. One Hundred Visions of War is an essential addition to the history of modernist poetry. More importantly, it is an urgent and deeply moving read, each vision guided into English by the poet Alfred Nicol, who brings a keen eye, an exacting ear, and a consummate poetic intelligence to these pages.” —Joseph Donahue, Professor of the Practice at Duke University; author of the ongoing poem Terra Lucida [read more HERE] |
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Death Comes for the Cathedrals
Marcel Proust This Wiseblood Books edition of Death Comes for the Cathedrals includes an introduction by its translator, Dr. John Pepino, and an afterword by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who wonders whether life may yet return to the cathedrals. Throughout, beautiful color images of Chartres and its architectural features grace the pages. "Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable." So begins Marcel Proust's Death Comes for the Cathedrals (La mort des cathédrales), originally published in Le Figaro (1904). Proust addresses the political and religious debate concerning the "the Briand bill," a parliamentary proposal which imperiled the fate of French Cathedrals--"the first and most perfect masterpieces" of Gothic architecture. The great author of In Search of Lost Time gives prophetic voice to his own fear that "France would be transformed into a shore where giant chiseled conches seemed to have run aground, emptied of the life that inhabited them and no longer bringing an attentive ear to the distant murmur of the past, simply museum objects, themselves frozen . . . [read more HERE] |
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As Earth Without Water
Katy Carl When Dylan Fielding, celebrated contemporary visual artist, becomes Br. Thomas Augustine, novice at Our Lady of the Pines monastery, he finds delight not only in the shock his choice causes everyone around him but—to his own surprise—in the rhythms of the life itself. Shortly before he solidifies a lifelong commitment to the community, a traumatic encounter with an abusive priest plunges Thomas Augustine into terror and doubt. Reeling and uncertain, he reaches out to his friend, rival, and former lover, Angele Solomon, with hopes that she can help him to speak the difficult truth. As she attempts to advocate for her friend, Angele must ask how the scars left by their common past—as well as newer harms—can ever be healed or transcended. The wider inquiries demanded next will transfigure how both of them picture a range of human and divine things: time and memory; art and agency; trust and responsibility; and what it might mean to know real freedom. "Katy Carl’s As Earth Without Water is a sharp and moving meditation on freedom, choice, and the creative life. 'Art is from the soul,' one of Carl’s lost painters insists; this novel certainly reads like it is." —Christopher Beha, Editor of Harper’s, author of What Happened to Sophie Wilder and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts |
Fiction
Works of Mercy
Sally Thomas |
Monographs
Christianity and the Writer's Task
Georges Bernanos |
Poetry
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Classics
Christ & Apollo
William F. Lynch |
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"The late James Laughlin’s publishing house, New Directions, is the standard at the moment for contemporary fiction. When you see ND on the spine, you know that you’re getting a solid work that is actively engaged with contemporary literary concerns. It is still too early to tell what will become of the upstart Wiseblood Books, but such a strong entry as this early on is a sign that it is heading in the right direction."
—From M.A. Peterson's review of Wiseblood Books'
A Waste of Shame and Other Sad Tales of the Appalachian Foothills |
