Customer Reviews

Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

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My wife and I have enjoyed this book of poems the last 2 years as a Advent/Christmas devotion. Many of the insights are new to us and old truths are made fresh. We each read the same poem out loud and then share our thoughts with each other. It is some of the most enjoyable poetry we have read any time of the year.

Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation is a lovely and deeply meaningful book. A gift for anytime of the year.

Luci Shaw begins her Introduction by recalling when she was ten or eleven in the 1940s. It was winter in Toronto, and she was making her own Christmas cards. Over the years, her number of Advent poems grew and appeared in a variety of publications. Luci writes, "Many of these poems have also appeared in other collections of my poetry, but here, for the first time, I've drawn them all together between the covers of a single book, and arranged them in what seemed to me to reflect the chronological order of the life of Jesus" (p. x).

The rich and well-crafted poems are organized into five sections: Announcement, Arrival, Living, Dying, Risen. Acknowledgments conclude the book.

Luci also writes: "Like all art, these poems are only 'hints and guesses.' But perhaps they will suggest some new possibilities and give you some fresh glimpses of the One who came to earth, and who in birth and resurrection was 'accompanied by angels'" (p. xi-xii).

This book was published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in 2006, copyright by Luci Shaw. I continue to reread these poems, often aloud. And I continue to give this book to others. This year, my gift went to a library.