| Ambition: Essays by Members of the Chrysostom Society | Walker, Jeanne | Luci Shaw | Cascade Books | Eugene, OR | 2015 | http://chrysostomsociety.org/2015/09/ambition/ | In a world of selfies and social media, where each of us reach for "fifteen minutes of fame," as Andy Warhol put it, is it good or bad to have ambition? Without ambition how is it possible to do anything well? But ambition can feed on itself, take over, become insatiable. A goal, duly accomplished, often leads to greater plans. Success with those plans leads to even grander possibilities, and soon blatant ambition is running the whole show.
Nine members of the Chrysostom Society of Writers asked themselves what role ambition has played in their lives. The volume, Ambition, is the result: a collection of essays in which, with striking honesty, they muse on their own motivations and experiences of ambition. The book contains a fascinating spectrum of responses and cautions, ranging from Diane Glancy's praise of ambition as a gift, to Eugene Peterson's narrative about how busyness can become spiritually crippling. Along the way Dain Trafton ponders his family's respect for ambition, on the one hand, and on the other, biblical condemnations of overweening pride. Erin McGraw argues that the extent to which ambition is good or bad depends upon the goal, the what for which one is ambitious. Jeanne Murray Walker wrestles with the ambivalences that accompany the gender-specific challenges of a woman with ambitions, while Gina Ochsner offers an entertaining appraisal of ambition's insatiability. Luci Shaw recounts her ambivalence regarding her literary acknowledgment. And Emily Griffin reflects on her own wrestling with the lure of "Fame." Finally, Bret Lott urges that wherever we are, having achieved our ambitions or still struggling with them, they should take a back seat to gratitude.
The purpose of Ambition is to inspire honest self-searching. It will encourage readers to probe their own identities and purposes, helping them to find a balance between hubris and self-abnegation. What is the legitimate role of ambition in a sane and ethical person's life? Does gender affect ambition? What does it mean to be justifiably ambitious for our children? How can we set and maintain limits for ambition in our own lives? These questions may be more urgent now than they have ever been. The fresh and original thinking of well-known and widely-published authors will challenge the readers' pre-conceptions, leaving them to ponder their own deeper reasons for doing what they do. | jwalker | | |
| The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage Through Alzheimer's | Walker, Jeanne | | Center Street | New York | 2013 | http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-geography-of-memory-jeanne-murray-walker/1114308542 | Award-winning poet Jeanne Murray Walker tells an extraordinarily wise, witty, and quietly wrenching tale of her mother's long passage into dementia. This powerful story explores parental love, profound grief, and the unexpected consolation of memory. While Walker does not flinch from the horrors of "the ugly twins, aging and death," her eye for the apt image provides a window into unexpected joy and humor even during the darkest days.
This is a multi-layered narrative of generations, faith, and friendship. As Walker leans in to the task of caring for her mother, their relationship unexpectedly deepens and becomes life-giving. Her mother's memory, which more and more dwells in the distant past, illuminates Walker's own childhood. She rediscovers and begins to understand her own past, as well as to enter more fully into her mother's final years.
The Georgraphy of Memory is not only a personal journey made public in the most engaging, funny, and revealing way possible, here is a story of redemption for anyone who is caring for or expecting to care for ill and aging parents-and for all the rest of us as well. | jwalker | | |
| New Tracks, Night Falling | Walker, Jeanne | | William B. Eerdmans Publishing | Grad Rapids, MI | 2009 | http://www.amazon.com/Tracks-Falling-Jeanne-Murray-Walker/dp/0802825729 | "About God and language, she speaks with a fine sense of negative capability. Belief is problematic; prayer isn't easy: In prayer lies prayer's answer. In the calling out,/ the visitation. In the arrow lives the target's eye (Praying for Rain in Santa Fe). Thomas Merton would have liked the ecumenical Asian echo of that last line.... In her poems she writes about 9/11, revenge, forgiveness, greed, domestic violence, art, a con artist, Bergman, Shakespeare, leather gloves, ruby earrings, a hawk, sparrows, dogs, and other topics of common interest made uncommonly interesting." --The Hudson Review, Autumn 2009
"Good poems are fresh ways of seeing. Here's Adam, quickly disillusioned with Eve for naming the yak the yak and singing off-key, yet "learning to love what he's been given." Such poems supply the faith-deep, myth-deep underpinnings for the book's rich sense of the ordinary and the now.... Jeanne Murray Walker leaves her readers with the feeling of enormous power held in reserve only by the true instincts of a superb artist. This is her finest book." --Rod Jellema
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| Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith | Walker, Jeanne | | Abilene Christian University Press | Abilene, TX | 2005 | http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Light-Literature-Faith-Edition/dp/0891120696 | This anthology of literature from 1300-2005 includes essays, fiction, poetry, and drama, primarily from the Christian tradition, but from other religious traditions as well. In it appear such writers as John Donne, John Henry Newman, Thomas Merton, Frederick Douglas, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Alice Munro, Alice Walker, T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and Czeslaw Milosz. The book offers a breadth of ethnic diversity and reclaims some brilliant work which has been out of print for many years.
The third edition will be published in 2013.
"Thanks to this new edition of Shadow and Light, the literature of faith is back on the playing field." --Eugene Peterson
"Shadow & Light is now the stand-out, single-volume faith and literature text." --Image Update, January 2006
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| A Deed to the Light | Walker, Jeanne | | University of Illinois Press | Urbana, IL and Chicago | 2004 | http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-deed-to-the-light-jeanne-murray-walker/1006224030 | "Underlying the overall intensity of the collection is... the startling juxtapositions of images and sudden metaphors which surprise the reader again and again. For her past work Walker has received numerous fellowships, from the NEA and the Pew Foundation, and her plays have been produced in such major cities as Chicago, Boston, and London. But she never loses the familiar touch, the honest voice." --The Midwest Quarterly | jwalker | | |
| Coming into History | Walker, Jeanne | | Cleveland State Univ Poetry Center | Cleveland, OH | 1991 | https://www.amazon.com/Coming-into-History-Csu%20Poetry/dp/0914946781/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Coming+Into+History+Jeanne+Murray+Walker&qid=1573079184&sr=8-1 | | jwalker | | |
| Fugitive Angels | Walker, Jeanne | | Dragon Gate Pr; 1st Ed. | | 1985 April | https://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Angels-Jeanne-Murray-Walker/dp/0937872202 | | jwalker | | |
| Nailing Up the Home Sweet Home (Csu Poetry Series) | Walker, Jeanne | | Cleveland State Univ Poetry Center; First Edition edition | Cleveland, OH | 1980 October | https://www.amazon.com/Nailing-Home-Sweet-Csu-Poetry/dp/0914946242 | | jwalker | | |