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St Thérese of Lisieux

Poems

This collection of poems by the nineteenth century saint is not a scholarly critical edition, it's a selection for readers new to her work. The poems are not as interesting as works of poetry as they are as works of ecstasy. Her love-passion for Jesus is extreme. Translator Alan Bancroft urges the reader to see this in the context of Thérese's literary influence, St John of the Cross, who wrote about the *betrothal* of human souls to Jesus. However, reading Thérese's poem "My heaven, There For Me", in which she describes what kind of attentive spouse she would make for Jesus, it gets harder to believe that the context is purely spiritual.

Am I being cynical? I do accept that there exists in people a more intense love for the idealized than for the definitely real.

- Barry Kavanagh

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