BASKET OF BREAD, A

BASKET OF BREAD, A

Thomas Merton wrote to Catherine de Vinck back in 1966, “You have a wonderful Blake-like response to the sacred world.” And Cornelia Jessey Sussman expressed these sentiments about her poetic gift: “...perhaps there are only three or four every century... given the gift to voice the eternal vision, to put into words what we know cannot be put into words. Like the sun breaking through the clouds of a dark frozen winter sky, such poets bring the good news that winter is not forever.” Poetry is more than language, it transcends what it signifies and enables us to see beyond the existing order. The poet is the primary mediator between God and creature, teaching us that truth cannot be reduced to abstract reason or philosophical formulas. “God is not of this world, though He dwells in it,” Father John Catoir writes in his Introduction to this volume. “He belongs more to the order of poetry. We can only speak of our Maker in images that transcend the present moment. We feel there is something beyond all that we see, something we can never conceive or imagine. I have found Catherine’s poetry a satisfying form of spiritual reading which leads me gently to the prayer of contemplation.”

About the Author: Born in Brussels, Catherine de Vinck spoke French and Flemish as a child under the Nazi occupation of Belgium and didn’t learn English until she came to the United States in 1948 with her husband Baron Jose de Vinck. Since then three American universities have awarded her honorary doctorates for her literary accomplishments: St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN; St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN; and Regis College in Weston, MA. Mother of six and author of a dozen books of poetry, she was the 1975 recipient of the Keats Poetry Prize.