All The Stars Are Snowflakes

By Father Ralph Wright and OSB

All The Stars Are Snowflakes is an inspirational, thought-provoking poetry book with poems featuring such topics as the total stillness and quiet of a snowfall, the impish antics of a busy squirrel, and always, the glory of God.

Fr. Ralph Wright, who is a poet of great distinction, pens works that reflect his knowledge of and respect for the masters. His images are both beautiful and startling; his metaphors perceptive, his use of rhyme natural.

His expertise lies in the unity of word and idea that is the essence of poetry. All the Stars are Snowflakes is one of eight books of verse. The poetry of All the Stars is never obscure but nevertheless demands that we return, again and again, to delight in and savor both words and subtle meanings.

All the Stars are Snowflakes offers a soothing escape from the pressures and turmoil of every day life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780984011704

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INTRODUCTION

In an interview of Joseph Brodsky by Jim Forest (Commonweal, 22 May 1992:7), the Russian poet stated A poet is like a bird. He chirps no matter what twig he lands on— and mistakes the rustle of leaves for applause.

The Benedictine poet Ralph Wright has landed on a number of twigs and his chirping deserves our listening and applause. He sings of snowflakes that populate our galaxies, of a neurotic squirrel whose claim to innocence is never successful, of Desert Storm and the wind’s ritual of reburial, of God as a social secretary who delights in surprises, of a flu bug’s encroachment on one’s ego, of icicles carrying one from St Louis to Palestine, of a coma patient held mercilessly from a compassionate God. ‘Tis a many branched tree with many fine songs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson offers a different metaphor to describe the poet: a lightning rod. The poet, like the lightning rod, must reach from a point nearer the sky than all surrounding objects down to the earth, and into the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. Ralph Wright risks the dangerous poetic vocation. His themes straddle the infinite and finite (see