Podcasts about idiot psalms

In this episode, Scott Cairns talks about certainty and mystery and getting glimpses of the unknowable God. Scott has spent forty years wrestling with, investigating, navigating words to help make meaning in our lives. In this conversation, we talk about words as things rather than labels, about reading a text the way the rabbis did - layer on layer, meaning that never closes - about prayer as communion rather than petition, and about what a culture loses as it stops reading. Underneath it all is a God who is endless, which means the knowing is never fully attained, but it's a beautiful pursuit.Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of multiple poetry collections, Scott Cairns is Curators' Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at University of Missouri. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and many other venues, and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. He has blogged for the Religion Section of The Huffington Post. His recent poetry books include the recently released Against Certainty (2026), Correspondence with My Greeks (2024), Lacunae (2023), Anaphora (2019), Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015), and Idiot Psalms (2014). His spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge, first appeared from HarperSanFrancisco in 2006, and has been translated into Greek and Romania. His Endless Life (translations and adaptations of Christian mystics, appeared in 2014, and his book-length essay, The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, was first published in 2009, and has also been translated into Greek. He wrote the libretti for two oratoria, The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp and A Melancholy Beauty. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. His current projects include Descent to the Heart, verse adaptations of selections from the homilies of Saint Isaak the Syrian, and a new poetry collection, Ways of Not Knowing.Scott's Book:Against CertaintyScott's Recommendations:LaurasA History of the IslandConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.comGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below Support the show

Episode 9 of Rewrite Radio features a conversation between four writers in the Eastern Orthodox religious tradition about the deep poetry and lasting peace that liturgy offers. Scott Cairns, Angela Doll Carlson, Gaelan Gilbert, and Cameron Alexander Lawrence reflect on Orthodoxy and how it can clear a pathway through the slings and arrows of modern life. Scott Cairns’s poems and essays have appeared many publications including The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and IMAGE Journal. His newest poetry collection is IDIOT PSALMS and he’s recently been appointed program director of the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University: http://spu.edu/prospects/grad/academics/mfa/index.asp Angela Doll Carlson is a poet, essayist and fiction writer. She’s the author of two books, NEARLY ORTHODOX: ON BEING A MODERN WOMAN IN AN ANCIENT TRADITION and GARDEN IN THE EAST: THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE BODY. Learn more at her website: http://www.angeladollcarlson.com Gaelan Gilbert is an assistant professor of English at St. Katherine College and the managing editor of the St. Katherine Review: http://www.stkathreview.org Cameron Alexander Lawrence is a poet, whose work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Exit 7, IMAGE Journal, and Rock and Sling. Learn more at his website: http://www.cameronlawrence.com

Bobby Maddex interviews renowned Orthodox poet Scott Cairns about his new collection of poetry Idiot Psalms.

Bobby Maddex interviews renowned Orthodox poet Scott Cairns about his new collection of poetry Idiot Psalms.

Bobby Maddex interviews renowned Orthodox poet Scott Cairns about his new collection of poetry Idiot Psalms.

Scott Cairns is a professor of English at the University of Missouri. He is also director of MU Writing Workshops in Greece, a program that brings graduate and undergraduate students to Thessaloniki and Thasos every June for intensive engagement with literary life in modern Greece. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, etc., and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. His most recent poetry collection is Compass of Affection. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and is completing work on a new poetry collection, Idiot Psalms, and a translation of selections from The Philokalia under the title Descent to the Heart. His memoir will be released in a new edition called Slow Pilgrim in 2014.

Cairns, poet and essayist, reads at Duke Divinity School from selected works, including "Recovered Body," "Compass of Affection," and a soon-to-be-published collection, "Idiot Psalms." A brief audience Q&A follows, with the reading of a final poem.