Keep the Feast: Poems

by Stephen Cushman

Stephen Cushman’s Keep the Feast sings in the tradition of the psalmists and devotional poets, offering an intimate, ecstatic doxology, both exultant and indicting, spiritual and secular. His poems make prodigious and intrepid forays into the realms of history, sexuality, religious ardor, the imperiled planet, and the reasons for making art. At the heart of this three-part book lies the title poem, which takes as a formal model Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Bible. In luminous verse, Cushman’s speaker rejoices in the commitments of faith, finding in them a way of living with the paradoxes of twenty-first-century life and of holding belief in an often-unfathomable world.

96 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2022

About the author

Stephen Cushman is Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tone of these poems, mixing the high and low, exulting in the use of language, is a joy. Stark insights nest side by side with humor and playfulness. The language is charged, and surprising, and shows a poet in control of his craft.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 History, love, prayer, birds. All the essentials.

A raucous ode to our embodiment and all our contradictions in the face of living. The central poem here that spans probably 25 pages, a redux of Psalm 119, is exquisite.