Customer Reviews

Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton

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I read this on Thanksgiving on my first trip to Gethsemani, where Merton was a monk. Smock has many connections with Merton, and a Merton poem identified the Fort Knox night artillery Smock heard growing up in Louisville. He hopes he was walking on 4th street with his grandmother, when Merton had his revelation that people are "walking around shining like the sun (a plaque commemorates the spot in Louisville).

Smock is also a poet, and explores Merton's poetry and the effect of William Blake, "As Blake worked himself into Merton's system, he "became more and more conscious of the necessity of a vital faith.". Smock writes that "silence laps at the poems very edge", and sitting at vespers at Gethsemani, is a prayer, a poem of silence. This inner peace, Merton and Smock translate into a call for world peace, from Vietnam to Iraq.

Although I never found the "Pax Intrantibus" sign at the Abbey, I did find some peace herein.

I got this book for someone else as a gift. I read some of the passages and loved the things Merton believed, and was impressed w/the author.