The marriage of poetry and spirituality is of course an ancient one, and in Down in the White of the Tree, Tim J. Myers works in that tradition. But his isn’t conventional religious poetry, some of which, he believes, is either inadequate for genuine spiritual seeking or antithetical to it. Myers works from the larger tradition, in which Rilke speaks of God as the profoundly distant Center on whose outermost periphery we reside—and from which Hafiz can assert that the universe is “just a tambourine” for us to play against our “warm thigh[s].” These are poems of doubt, of faith, and of a profound love for the radiance we can encounter in the world.
Advance Reviews for Down in the White of the Tree:
“Tim J. Myers writes of the sacred—not inside church halls looking through stained-glass windows—but with the cat in the alleyway, the bat sweeping through night, white trees, winter’s slushy streets. He puts “spirit’ where it needs to be, part of our daily lives, released from brick’s moral tones into an appreciation of all that’s alive among us. Myers writes with the heart’s imagination, placing light on our modest existences made more meaningful with a language that unifies mind and soul. Down in the White of the Tree is a contribution to spiritual literature because words are seeds, vectors of love and hope, and will change to the good with each reading.”
– Grace Cavalieri, “The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress”
“Like the psalms, the poems in Down in the White of the Tree are hymns of praise, heart-felt memory, and amazement. This is a beautiful, masterful collection that our aching world truly needs.”
– Ron Hansen, National Book Award finalist
“Tim Myers’ poems transport you to places you did not know you wanted to go. But once you are there, you travel willingly to the places words and beauty can take you when you fall into the unknown known Myers creates. I invite you to travel with him in the beauty and refuge of his poems so that you too can be transported and refreshed.”
– Dr. Sarita Mamayo-Moraga, expert on Zen and Catholicism, Santa Clara University
