Under Contract
A Poet's Heart:
Thomas Merton, Poetry, and the Discovery of the True Self.
Under contract with Collective Ink.
Expected publication: 2027.
John M Gillespie
Author
To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sensendie: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is andeath for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know orntreasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.
- Thomas Merton
About Me
John Gillespie
Author, Professor, Merton Scholar
John Gillespie, PhD, is the organizer of the Houston chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society. He has published essays on Thomas Merton for ABC-CLIO’s American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time, An Unexpected Journal, Conceptions Review, The Anglican Compass, The Merton Annual Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal, and The New Ray Bradbury Review.
A Poetu2019s Heart offers a fresh perspective on Thomas Mertonu2019s teaching on the true and false self. Mertonu2019s own prose, poetry, and recorded conferences with his novices, are drawn into conversation with the work of four major poets he studied throughout his adult life - Eliot, Rilke, Hopkins, and Blake. John Gillespie balances careful scholarship with an accessible writing voice as he demonstrates how their poetic visions influenced Mertonu2019s thought. A Poetu2019s Heart, however, is not content to be just an academic achievement. Chapter by chapter, we come to see that Merton and the poets have not merely been analyzed; they have become sources of meditation for Gillespie. He invites the reader to join him, as he reflects on the vocation to embrace our true self, and draws us towards an understanding of the continuing significance of Mertonu2019s spiritual insight as we navigate solitude and communion, human identity and suffering, and our relationship with the earth and its creatures. Gillespieu2019s efforts remind us that the best of Christian theological reflection is, at its very roots, poetic and contemplative.
Paul Pynkoski
International Thomas Merton Society (ITMS)