Common Life [Paperback]

Robert Cording (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2006

Common Life looks at the various meanings of common, especially its senses of familiar and widely known; belong or relating to the community at large; and its twinned notions of simple and rudimentary and vulgar and profane. The book's perspective is religious, and is grounded in the epigraph from the Psalms: "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him." The "waiting" that is required has to do with three things: first, our desire, as Charles Wright puts it, "to believe in belief" rather than believe; secondly, the need for a setting aside of the self, an abandonment of "every attempt to make something of oneself, even...a righteous person" in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and thirdly, the "waiting" must be as Eliot wrote in the Four Quartets a waiting "without hope for hope would be hope of the wrong thing." If we learn to wait in these ways, the final section of the book suggests that we have the chance of opening ourselves to all that is graceful within life's common bounds.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Robert Cording has a profound sense of the fissure that separates self and soul in present day America. He . . . is a crucial poet, one who shows that our unflinching love can withstand our abiding fear." (Baron Wormser )

About the Author

ROBERT CORDING, a native of New Jersey and currently teaching at Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, has published over 300 poems in various literary magazines such as The New Yorker, American Scholar, Gettysburg Rcview, and Kenyon Review. In 1998, he was co-editor of an anthology of poems, essay and fiction on the Beatles. Awards range from a Bread Loaf Fellowship in poetry; New England Review's Narrative Poetry Prize; Poet-in-Residence at The Frost Place; National Endowment for the Fellowship in Poetry; Judge for Connecticut Commission On the Arts Fellowships, 2000; Pushcart Prize; Holy Cross Teaching Award; Chautauqua Teaching Award for best workshop; and Judge for Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Cavankerry (May 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972304576
• ISBN-13: 978-0972304573
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of beauty and courage and hope against despair, September 9, 2006

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Common Life (Paperback)

Common Life is the fifth published collection of poems by Robert Cording (Professor of English and Barrett Professor of Creative Writing at Holy Cross College) and infused with spirituality. Cording's themes include conflicted spirituality and the informed mysteries of life and death. A vastness of vision infuses the verse. Starkness is embraced and celebrated. Tormented dualities and unblessed beginnings, and endings, are still nourishment for the spirit. Where Cording casts his light, surprising enlivened details spring into being. The poem A Prayer to Adam exemplifies many of his approaches to a poetic spirituality: Muse of names,/ Help us to know/ What we cannot name./ Gardener of paradise,/ Help us grow upright/ With the modesty/ Of plants that find/ Freedom in their lack/ Of choices, and thrive./ Father of death,/ Help us to live/ With our dying/ So that we may find/ Ourselves walking back/ Down a path we forgot,/ Towards a field/ Here on earth/ Where the sun is/ So bright and clear/ Even the dullest sparrow/ Is seen in the richness/ Of its browns and grays/ The streaks on its breast/ Numbered in our sight. Common Life is full of beauty and courage and hope against despair. It is poetry for our time.