This uplifting paperback brings together in a fruitful union the poems of the prophet and priest Daniel Berrigan and the photographs of Adrianna Amari to salute peace in a culture of war. As noted historian Howard Zinn says in the introduction to this melding of art and activism:
"It was in Baltimore, over a ten-year period, that Adrianna Amari took her extraordinary photographs of sculptures scattered through the city — of tombstones and church steeples, mothers and children. It is all there, as in Berrigan's poems — life and death, the prayer that comes with commitment, the hope that comes with resistance, the visions of a world where peace and justice prevail."
Amari made the selection of Berrigan's poems, pairing them with her photographs in ways that elicit our emotions and soulful responses. Both the poet and the photographer reverence life and hate the scourge of war. A graveyard is pictured across from Berrigan's "Consolation": Berrigan:
"Listen
if now and then
you hear the dead
muttering like ashes
creaking like empty
rockers on porches
filling you in filling you in
like winds in empty
branches &nsp; like star
in wintry trees
so far
so good
you've mastered finally
one foreign tongue"
So much suffering, pain, and anguish in the world. Berrigan's poems and Amari's photographs offer an alternative to the hatred and the violence of senseless wars. There is strength in honesty that does not turn away from the harshness that we bring into the lives of others. Such directness compels us to realize that we must all be peacemakers, doing our small part in practicing love and nonviolence.
