To Heaven's Rim

“To risk hyperbole, there has never been a book like To Heaven’s Rim ​​​before. Horniachek’s anthology shows us how continuous are the Christian theological and spiritual traditions with the poetic one, and that the most profound beauty will be found in ancient texts of which few contemporary Christians will have heard before.”


—James Matthew Wilson, author of The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking





“In this delicious anthology, as at some extratemporal wedding feast, a millennium and a half of the world’s greatest Christian poets mingle with immortal English-language poets—Henry Vaughn, Longfellow, and Hopkins—and with contemporary masters such as Willis Barnstone, Christopher Childers, Rhina Esplaillat, Edith Grossman, Seamus Heaney, A. E. Stallings, George Szirtes, and Richard Wilbur. Laetare! If you hunger for the beauty of poetry and the wisdom of theology, taste and see.”


—Ryan Wilson, editor-in chief, Literary Matters





“In his learned anthology of Christian poetry, Burl Horniachek takes us from the early fourth century to the end of the eighteenth, from Syria and Ethiopia to China and Mexico, embracing an exhilarating variety of poetic modes while insisting upon the highest standards of the translator’s art. What we witness throughout the book is not the spread of a doctrine, but the emergence of individual voices and visions, and, in some cases, of entire national literary traditions, enkindled by devotion.”


—Boris Dralyuk, co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry





“‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations,’ Christ exhorts his disciples. This impressive anthology affirms what we should already know: that like the word of God itself, the Christian poetic tradition speaks to, and from, all the world, in all its tongues. Collecting poems from the early church forward, drawing on the best poets and translators working today, Burl Horniachek has given readers in English that tradition’s diverse beauty and vibrancy.”


—Sally Thomas, editor of Christian Poetry in America Since 1940