Review
Fred Bassett has wrestled with the angels, and come away a winner. Awake My Heart does for the Psalms what the Book of J did for Genesis: these interpretations revitalize the poetry for the modern ear, while leaving the original majesty intact. A brave and wonderful work. -- Les Standiford, author of Deal on Ice; Director of the CRW program at Florida International University.
Standing at the threshold of the twenty-first century, poet/theosophist Bassett raises a poignant cry in our modern-day computer-generated wilderness. Awake My Heart is a veritable treasure of passionate, profoundly-affecting new soul music for a spiritually-dispossessed population, born into a barren, silicon-insulated, electronically-alienated age. -- Brewster M. Robertson, freelance writer
When I read the psalms I am always amazed at their intensity. They seem to be brimming with a huge range of human emotion and passion, with which I often identify. In fact, I love to pray the psalms - with their great biblical poetry - either to give words to my own despairs or to express my jubilation. Frederick Bassett, in casting these poems anew, enhances their resonance and reality, giving them a freshness and vitality which is augmented when, as he suggests, they are read aloud! -- Luci Shaw, author of Water My Soul
Standing at the threshold of the twenty-first century, poet/theosophist Bassett raises a poignant cry in our modern-day computer-generated wilderness. Awake My Heart is a veritable treasure of passionate, profoundly-affecting new soul music for a spiritually-dispossessed population, born into a barren, silicon-insulated, electronically-alienated age. -- Brewster M. Robertson, freelance writer
When I read the psalms I am always amazed at their intensity. They seem to be brimming with a huge range of human emotion and passion, with which I often identify. In fact, I love to pray the psalms - with their great biblical poetry - either to give words to my own despairs or to express my jubilation. Frederick Bassett, in casting these poems anew, enhances their resonance and reality, giving them a freshness and vitality which is augmented when, as he suggests, they are read aloud! -- Luci Shaw, author of Water My Soul
From the Inside Flap
With near-perfect pitch, Fred Bassett has fashioned the pungent, sharp-edged verses of Biblical poetry into well-crafted psalms of sorrow and psalms of praise. Together these psalms embrace an enormous range of emotions that cry out with utter directness for the reader to give them voice. - David Stern, Senior Editor Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster
The juxtapositions and rearrangements of Awake My Heart are startling in the best sense of the that word. They ask me to hear familiar lines anew, to draw new solace and power from them. Frederick Bassett imagines Job and Jeremiah singing a lamentation together, or Daniel entering a psalm. In this new poetry he creates, the sorrow rolls out like thunder; the praise lights up the sky. - Valerie Sayers, author of Brain Fever; Professor of English, University of Notre Dame
