Jay Parini

An acclaimed, award-winning, and best-selling poet, novelist, and critic turns his poetic and literary eye to the most famous prayer in human history. For Christians, the Lord’s Prayer stands at the heart of both belief and practice. It offers a brief yet profound window into Jesus at prayer, and it continues to guide those who follow in his way. In this close, meditative, and far‑reaching reading—drawn from the slightly different versions found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke—Parini brings to bear his formidable gifts as poet, critic, and teacher. Moving line by line, Parini unpacks the depth and resonance of this fabled prayer, illuminating its layers of meaning and the many ways it reveals the nature of God. In doing so, he considers what it truly means to live the Lord’s Prayer: to lean into its words, inhabit them, and allow them to shape one’s character and daily practice of faith and reconciliation. Parini—whose distinguished career has been recognized with major honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship—draws on his mastery as poet, critic, and novelist to emphasize the prayer’s lived dimension. He helps readers experience it not simply as a sacred text, but as a transformative way of being. “Parini, a noted author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, offers a brief but densely packed reflection that views the Lord’s Prayer with the eyes of both a believer and a scholar. His approach is deeply personal yet informed throughout by the thoughts of others…. Highly literate treatment of a vital element in the Christian tradition” —Kirkus Reviews Praise for Jay Parini THE PATCH BOYS “Subtly paced narrative.” — The New York Times Book Review “Dazzling.” — Los Angeles Times “A beautifully crafted coming‑of‑age novel.” — Library Journal THE LAST STATION The New York Times Notable Book of the Year • Basis for the Oscar‑nominated film “An absorbing account of Tolstoy’s last year.” — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “One of the best historical novels of the last twenty years.” — Gore Vidal “A fine novel.” — Rowan Williams BENJAMIN’S CROSSING The New York Times Notable Book “An elegant novel about the paradoxical critic Walter Benjamin.” — The New York Times Book Review ROBERT FROST: A LIFE “A pleasure to read… brings Frost sharply into focus.” — The New York Times “Humanizing and illuminating.” — The Miami Herald ONE MATCHLESS TIME: A LIFE OF WILLIAM FAULKNER “A vivid tribute.” — J. M. Coetzee “A landmark biography.” — Library Journal (starred) “Spellbinding… enthralling.” — Houston Chronicle / Seattle Times WHY POETRY MATTERS “Celebrates poetry and life itself.” — Samuel Pickering “Concise, cogent, and convincing.” — J. D. McClatchy JESUS: THE HUMAN FACE OF GOD Amazon Best Book of the Month “Capacious and inspiring.” — The Seattle Times “A warm, bold, well‑written biography.” — The Huffington Post “Well informed and deeply personal.” — The Boston Globe THE PASSAGES OF H. M. “A thoughtful re‑imagining.” — The Washington Post “Deeply absorbing… adds to Melville’s presence.” — Los Angeles Times BORGES AND ME “A jewel of a book—funny, clever, moving.” — Ian McEwan “Full of energy and humor.” — Ann Beattie “Brings Borges sharply to life.” — The New York Times “A classic comic‑philosophical road story.” — The Wall Street Journal

In Doing More with One Life, best-selling author Piasecki welcomes the reader into his home, revealing the heart-breaking early death of his father, and his deep respect and love for the women in his life, especially his mother, who devoted her life to her children, both foster and biological. He explores the life-shaping moments in his personal history and imagines what is to come next in a series of well-wrought vignettes. Piasecki’s upbringing was laced with poverty and trauma. He began reading at an early age, seeking out the wisdom and relevance from the “magical clan of writers” who helped him strengthen his writing muscle and feed into his creative hunger. Bruce’s journey to becoming a writer is spiritual and practical, as he discovers and uncovers what is truly valuable in a life. As well as being a writer, Piasecki is also an environmentalist, a speaker on climate and society, and AHC Group founder. He has also founded the family-endowed Creative Force Foundation. Doing More with One Life can be read as biography, or inventive memoir, or even as magical realism. Piasecki leaves that choice up to his reader. Readers and followers of Piasecki’s expansive career in environmental and community issues will be deeply moved by his tales of loss and his determination to make himself—and his world—into something profoundly better.

Celebrate Robert Frost's 150th birthday with a deluxe keepsake edition featuring 16 of his greatest poems--with brilliant essays highlighting his special genius and the power of memorization to unlock the magic of his language During a public reading Robert Frost was once asked why he so frequently recited his poems from memory. With typical wit, he replied: "If they won't stick to me, I won't stick to them." Remarkably among the modern poets, his poems "stick" to the reader: "Mending Wall," with its famous invocation of the rural maxim "Good fences make good neighbors""The Road Not Taken," about the beguiling possibilities of life"Birches," which reminds us that "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," with its unforgettable final line: "And miles to go before I sleep." Here, poet and Frost biographer Jay Parini presents these and 12 other Frost poems to learn by heart. In short accompanying commentaries, Parini illuminates the stylistic and imaginative features of each of the poems, drawing in biographical material from Frost's life to provide further context. "The goal of this little book is to encourage readers to slow down--to listen to Frost's words and phrases, to locate their deepest rhythms, and hear the tune of each poem as it unfolds. . . . Memorizing a poem can teach us much about a poem's structure and argument, and about the resonance of particular words. And best of all, memorization makes a poem part of our inner lives. Once committed to memory, a poem is available to us for recall at any time--and the occasions for remembering it will make themselves known to us. It isn't something we have to work at." Anyone who has read and loved Frost's poetry will want to own and treasure this little gift edition. Those reading Frost for the first time or those wishing to become better acquainted with one of America's greatest poets will not find a better, more insightful guide than Jay Parini.

Michele Campo is living the bourgeois Italian dream. Now a speech pathologist in his forties, he resides in an expensive Naples home with his partner, Costanza, daughter of an upper-class family. Michele’s own family origins, however, are murkier. When he is assigned to work with five-year-old foster child Martina, he grows increasingly engrossed by her case, as his own buried family history slowly claws its way back to the surface. The first novel by acclaimed Italian writer Angelo Cannavacciuolo to be translated into English, When Things Happen tells a powerful and intriguing story of what we lose when we leave our origins behind. It presents a panoramic view of Neapolitan society unlike any in literature, revealing a city of extreme contrasts, with a glamorous center ringed by suburban squalor. Above all, it is a psychologically nuanced portrait of a man struggling to locate what he values in life and the poor vulnerable child who helps him find it.

Michele Campo is living the bourgeois Italian dream. Now a speech pathologist in his forties, he resides in an expensive Naples home with his partner, Costanza, daughter of an upper-class family. Michele’s own family origins, however, are murkier. When he is assigned to work with five-year-old foster child Martina, he grows increasingly engrossed by her case, as his own buried family history slowly claws its way back to the surface. The first novel by acclaimed Italian writer Angelo Cannavacciuolo to be translated into English, When Things Happen tells a powerful and intriguing story of what we lose when we leave our origins behind. It presents a panoramic view of Neapolitan society unlike any in literature, revealing a city of extreme contrasts, with a glamorous center ringed by suburban squalor. Above all, it is a psychologically nuanced portrait of a man struggling to locate what he values in life and the poor vulnerable child who helps him find it.

LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZEIn frantic flight from the Vietnam War, Jay Parini leaves the United States for Scotland. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The pair embark on a trip to the Scottish Highlands, and on the way the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry. Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era - like our own - in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls "a kindof novelistic memoir," Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland--in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. Borges--visiting his translator in Scotland--is in his seventies, blind and frail. When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, he declares a long-held wish to visit the Highlands, where he hopes to meet a man in Inverness who is interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travel, stopping at various sites of historical interest, the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of Western literature and ideas, while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges's idiosyncratic world of labyrinths, mirrors, and doubles shimmers into being, their escapades take a surreal turn. Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical mystery tour of an era, like our own, in which uncertainties abound, and when--as ever--it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

There is no such thing as history, you see. It's a dream, perhaps even a dream of a dream . . . Walter Benjamin is dead. One of the most radiant minds of the twentieth century has been snatched away by death in a small town on the border between Spain and France. His thousand-page manuscript, carried the length of France during his flight from the Nazis, has vanished with him, never to be recovered. Jay Parini's extraordinary novel traces Benjamin's steps back through time, from the salons of Berlin to the winding roads of Catalonia. A tale of escape and pursuit, Benjamin's Crossing dramatises one of the most moving peripheral episodes of the Holocaust; and above all, it is a love story.

The acclaimed and now-classic biographical novel of Walter Benjamin's last days--adapted into screenplay by Jay Parini. It is 1940. For the past decade, Walter Benjamin--the German-Jewish critic and philosopher--has been writing his masterpiece in a library in Paris, a city he loves. Now Nazi tanks have overrun the suburbs, and Benjamin is forced to flee. With a battered briefcase that contains his precious manuscript of a thousand handwritten pages, he sets off for the border and is led by chance to a young anti-Nazi who is taking Jews and other refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain, where they may (with luck) make their way to freedom in Portugal or South America. Beloved biographical novelist Jay Parini's thrilling tale of escape is beautifully interwoven with vignettes of Benjamin's complex, cosmopolitan past: his privileged childhood in Berlin, his years with the German Youth Movement, his university days. His close friendship with Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, and many other well-known artists and intellectuals who were part of Benjamin's intimate circle between the two world wars. Part tragedy, part dark comedy, this sharply realized historical novel tells one of the great and most moving peripheral stories of the Holocaust.

Dzhej Parini - master redkogo zhanra: liriko-biograficheskogo romana. Chitatelju uzhe khorosho znakoma ego kniga "Poslednee voskresenie" o finale zhizni Lva Tolstogo, legshaja v osnovu odnoimennogo filma Majkla Khoffmana s Kristoferom Plammerom i Khelen Mirren v glavnykh roljakh, nominirovannymi za eti roli na "Oskara". V romane "Put Benjamina" Parini obraschaetsja k biografii odnogo iz velichajshikh myslitelej XX veka. So svoimi slozhnymi fragmentarnymi tekstami, interpretirovat kotorye mozhno do beskonechnosti, Valter Benjamin udivitelnym obrazom okazyvaetsja zlobodnevnym myslitelem imenno sejchas, popadaja v dukh vremeni tochnee mnogikh nashikh sovremennikov. O tom, chto filosof pogib v 1940 godu v ispanskom pogranichnom gorodke Portbou, spasajas begstvom iz okkupirovannoj natsistami Frantsii, Parini rasskazyvaet uzhe v prologe ustami Gershoma Sholema, druga Benjamina i vidnogo issledovatelja kabbalistiki. Dalee slovo predostavljaetsja kak samomu filosofu, tak i razlichnym znavshim ego ljudjam - druzjam, provodniku cherez Pirenei, byvshej vozljublennoj, na neskolko let priglasivshej ego v Moskvu....

In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls "a kindof novelistic memoir," Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland--in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. Borges--visiting his translator in Scotland--is in his seventies, blind and frail. When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, he declares a long-held wish to visit the Highlands, where he hopes to meet a man in Inverness who is interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travel, stopping at various sites of historical interest, the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of Western literature and ideas, while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges's idiosyncratic world of labyrinths, mirrors, and doubles shimmers into being, their escapades take a surreal turn. Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical mystery tour of an era, like our own, in which uncertainties abound, and when--as ever--it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a superb historical novel of the Apostle Paul, whose tireless and epic preaching of the message of Jesus brought Christianity into existence and changed human history forever. In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had some sort of blinding vision, a profound conversion experience that transformed Paul into the most effective and influential messenger Christianity has ever had. In The Damascus Road novelist Jay Parini brings this fascinating and ever-controversial figure to full human life, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions. In relating Paul's epic journeys, both geographical and spiritual, Parini unfolds a vivid panorama of the ancient world on the verge of epochal change. And in the alternating voice of the Gospel writer Luke, Paul's travel companion, scribe, and ghostwriter, a cooler perspective on his actions and beliefs emerges--ironic but still filled with wonder at Paul's unshakable commitment to the Christ and his divinity.

From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a superb historical novel of the Apostle Paul, whose tireless and epic preaching of the message of Jesus brought Christianity into existence and changed human history forever. In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had some sort of blinding vision, a profound conversion experience that transformed Paul into the most effective and influential messenger Christianity has ever had. In The Damascus Road novelist Jay Parini brings this fascinating and ever-controversial figure to full human life, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions. In relating Paul's epic journeys, both geographical and spiritual, he unfolds a vivid panorama of the ancient world on the verge of epochal change. And in the alternating voice of the Gospel writer Luke, Paul's travel companion, scribe, and ghostwriter, a cooler perspective on his actions and beliefs emerges -- ironic but still filled with wonder at Paul's unshakable commitment to the Christ and his divinity.

Renowned poet and novelist Jay Parini's The Way of Jesus is a book for progressive Christians and spiritual seekers who struggle, as Parini does, with some of the basic questions about human existence: its limits and sadnesses, and its possibilities for awareness and understanding. Part guide to Christian living, part spiritual autobiography, The Way of Jesus is Jay Parini's exploration of what Jesus really meant, his effort to put love first in our daily lives. Called "one of those writers who can do anything" by Stacy Schiff in the New York Times Book Review, Parini--a lifelong Christian who has at times wavered and questioned his beliefs--recounts his own efforts to follow Jesus's example, examines the contours of Christian thinking, and describes the solace and structure one can find in the rhythms of the church calendar. Parini's refreshingly undogmatic approach to Christian thinking incorporates teachings from other religions, as well as from poets and other writers who have helped Parini along his path to understanding.

A new book, the first in over a decade, from acclaimed poet Jay Parini This volume revolves around his deep connection to nature and underlines his concerns about the impacts of pollution and climate change. In these beautiful, haunting poems, Parini writes about the landscapes of mining country, of the railroads of Pennsylvania, of farm country, of worlds lost and families dispersed. He explores faith and how it is tested. He limns the deepest crevices of the human heart and soul. He surprises and moves us. In addition to a complete volume's worth of new work, called West Mountain Epilogue, offering more than fifty poems never before published in any form, Parini has collected the very best work from his previous four volumes, the poems, as he tells us, "written in the past forty years that I wish to stand by.' Lavishly and deservingly praised over the decades for his work as an essayist, critic, biographer, novelist, and, especially, poet, Parini shines as never before in this generous volume.

A Life of Gore Vidal

The definitive biography of one of the twentieth century's foremost thinkers and writers.

Robert Frost observed in his wife, Elinor, a desire to live ""a life that goes rather poetically."" The same could be said of many members of the Frost family, over several generations. In You Come Too, Frost’s granddaughter, Lesley Lee Francis, combines priceless personal memories and rigorous research to create a portrait of Frost and the women, including herself, whose lives he touched. Francis provides a vivid picture of Frost the family man, revealing him to be intensely engaged rather than the aloof artist that is commonly portrayed. She shares with us the devastation Frost and Elinor experienced when faced with tragic illnesses, both physical and mental, and the untimely death of family members. Elinor’s own death added to the poet’s despair and unleashed complex feelings throughout the family (Francis’s mother would lament the toll taken on Elinor by what she perceived as Frost’s ""selfishness"" in the life he had chosen). This is also the story of Lesley Frost, Francis’s remarkable mother, who struggled to emerge from her celebrated father’s shadow, while, as one of the people closest to him, sharing his intuitive impulse to write and to indulge their mutual love of books and poetry. Francis would herself become yet another writer and, like her grandfather and mother before her, a teacher--despite sharing Frost’s sense of being ""imperfectly academic."" In addition, Francis explores Frost’s professional relationships with women outside the family, such as the poets Harriet Monroe, Amy Lowell, and Susan Hayes Ward. Francis’s invaluable insights into Frost’s poetry and her inclusion of previously unpublished family writings and photographs make this book essential to Frost scholarship. But You Come Too will appeal to anyone interested in this great poet’s life and work. It also reveals unforgettable stories of strong, independent women and their passion to create and share poetry.

With the same masterly touch that made The Last Station so powerful, Jay Parini penetrates the mind and soul of another literary titan. Through the eyes of his long-suffering wife, Lizzie, we are introduced to an aging, angry, and drunken Herman Melville. He is decades past his flourishing career as a writer of bestselling tales of seagoing adventures. His epic but ungainly Moby-Dick was meant to make him immortal, but critics scoffed and readers fled. He spends his days trudging the docks of New York as a customs inspector and contemplating his malign literary fate. But within him is stirring, perhaps, one great work yet. . . . In a narrative that shifts seamlessly between Lizzie's personal account and evocative snapshots of Melville's crowded life, Parini manages to humanize a giant of letters, while illuminating the source of his matchless creativity.