Edward Clarke

The Secret Mind of Art invites the reader into the mysteries of Western art. Its twelve chapters accompany readers on a transformative journey through some of the most significant works of the European tradition. Having first passed through the Door in the Sky of the Pantheon in Rome, we contemplate Christ in his Mandorla at Autun Cathedral, then meet Notre Dame in Paris as a stone, timber, and glass manifestation of the New Jerusalem. Each subsequent chapter furthers the adventure chronologically into hidden dimensions of painting, sculpture, and architecture, by the likes of Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Donatello, Michelangelo, Titian, Palladio, William Blake, van Gogh, and C zanne. We are awakened stepwise to wonders forming a soul-making ladder for the contemplative spectator or reader. Here we have a crack at answering W. B. Yeats's query: How can art bring the soul of man to God?

The Secret Mind of Art invites the reader into the mysteries of Western art. Its twelve chapters accompany readers on a transformative journey through some of the most significant works of the European tradition. Having first passed through the Door in the Sky of the Pantheon in Rome, we contemplate Christ in his Mandorla at Autun Cathedral, then meet Notre Dame in Paris as a stone, timber, and glass manifestation of the New Jerusalem. Each subsequent chapter furthers the adventure chronologically into hidden dimensions of painting, sculpture, and architecture, by the likes of Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Donatello, Michelangelo, Titian, Palladio, William Blake, van Gogh, and C zanne. We are awakened stepwise to wonders forming a soul-making ladder for the contemplative spectator or reader. Here we have a crack at answering W. B. Yeats's query: How can art bring the soul of man to God?

The poems in Cherubims explore the complex labyrinth of childhood-and parenting-in ways that are unflinchingly candid, delightfully entertaining, and unmistakably wise. The collection offers readers a sustained and thoughtful musing on life, one that gives voice to puzzlement alongside praise, to worries as well as wonder. Throughout this volume Edward Clarke's writing weds reverence and wit, a rare accomplishment in contemporary poetry, and make no mistake about it: these are brilliantly crafted poems, quietly elegant in style, unobtrusively measured in form, and thoroughly delicious to read.-Mark S. Burrows, author of The Chance of Home. Poems (2018) and Meister Eckhart's Book of Secrets (2019)Clarke's themes of love and spiritual longing, set within the domestic realm of husbandhood and fatherhood, offer us a real philosophy of how language might connect us to those we love most. In this collection, he reveals himself to be a poet aware of the "miraculous influence" of the everyday light and world around us, as Wallace Stevens wrote. These poems are composed with ambition and wonder of the highest order: "My intention is to match the hymns Sung by the seraphims" ("Holy, Holy, Holy.") Is it possible to achieve this? Clarke's efforts are the reader's reward.-Anthony Caleshu, Professor of Poetry, University of Plymouth, and author of A Dynamic Exchange Between Us (2019)If words indeed are living things, then they live intensely in these poems which might best be read as "thin" places where the divisions between earth and heaven, the sacred and the secular, are almost transparent. Most of them are rooted in the life of the family, in the poet's relationships with his wife, two sons and parents, in the chaos and vitality of "cherubims" at home, in school assemblies, nativity plays, Halloween. They are also founded upon the Bible and Christian liturgy, with subtly hidden learning from Angelus Silesius to Orpheus. These poems are precious ventures into the holy in our midst, carefully crafted expressions of love and faith.-David Jasper, Emeritus Professor, University of Glasgow, and author of Heaven in Ordinary (2018)

This collection of poems engages in new and animating ways with one of the profoundest texts of our past, the Book of Psalms. These poems are Clarke's response to his experience of reading the Psalter through once every month according to Cranmer’s divisions in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (UCLA)N022805London: printed for Edw. Evets, 1702. 6],26p.; 4