"Just as the church was born in song, so the church reaches its true end in song. Between now and then, the church is defined by her songs, which is why I so enjoyed reading this collection of "songs" in Ben Palpant's book, The Stranger. With poems that evoke the raw honesty of Israel's "sweet psalmist" and that hew to the character arc of Christ's life, Palpant's book invites readers to encounter afresh the mystery of God Incarnate and to see their own lives anew, as if for the first time, in the light of that encounter. This is a book worth savoring-slowly, purposefully, repeatedly." -W. David O. Taylor, author of Open and Unafraid "The Stranger is a marvelous achievement. These are God-haunted poems. He appears as a burglar, a creator, and even the wounded healer that Eliot once knew. '. . .I must not helmet my heart, ' Palpant writes in this career-defining collection of poems. And yet, is this not a reasonable inclination after a century of priests and kings reading supposed lines from God's obituary? The Stranger offers ample reason to put down shield and armor long enough to see (as Hopkins once did) a world 'charged with the grandeur of God.' The poems in this collection are audacious, thought-provoking, and possess a quality that is strangely absent in so much contemporary verse. Namely, the sublime." -Jeremiah Webster, author of After So Many Fires "Ben Palpant's poems in The Stranger breakdance through both biblical and literary history, remixing tunes from Tennyson and Gwendolyn Brooks with samples from the pop band Starship and the Divine Office. But those juxtapositions are not this strong collection's best surprise. Rather, it's the big quiet after each poem ends in which we mouth both How true and Hallelujah. This book is at once a daring and a tender undertaking." -Mischa Willett, author of The Elegy Beta "T.S. Eliot aspired that each poem he wrote should be an event. Pilgrimaging alongside Ben Palpant's The Stranger proved to be, indeed, an enthralling event! This stunning collection of poems sweeps as wide as it delves deep: Palpant gives varied and profound voice to the longings, sufferings and joys of faith within the framework of Christ's own coming, incarnation, death and resurrection. With an ardent love of the word and The Word, Palpant provocatively displays poetry as prayer, praise and power." -Carolyn Weber, author of Surprised by Oxford "Ben Palpant's newest book, The Stranger: Meditations on Christ, begins with a George Herbert quote: "I live to show his power, who once did bring my joys to weep and now my griefs to sing." And, Palpant has done just that in this engaging collection. With great empathy for Christ's journey, Palpant, in the best Ignatian and Rilkean traditions, imagines himself into famous, familiar and often, forgive me, worn stories from the Old and New Testaments. The result is a set of poems that offers a contemporary and personal conception of God, poems that challengeus to revisit our own understandings of the gospels and Hebrew texts. The poems are reverential without being overly pious, wry and good- humored, sometimes even fierce. And lest we forget that great poetry is always much more than its thematic considerations or a poet's tonal approach to the subject at hand, these poems are well-crafted works of art: exquisite sentences, taut stanzas, crisp lines that never slacken, and images that surprise and deepen; they present us with multiple layers of meanings. Is it overstatement to suggest that this level of attention to how a poem "works"- the employment of tangible poetic craft-form, sound, image-in the service of meaning-is not unlike the way ritual objects transport us from the tangible world to the invisible world of mystery and grace? In this way can they be thought of as sacramental? Well, th Ben Palpant is a storyteller and poet living in the Northwest. He has written several books, including Letters From The Mountain and A Small Cup of Light. He has also contributed several liturgies for Every Moment Holy, Vol. 3. He and his wife have five children, two dogs, and a lifetime of stories to tell.